Numbers 2

Translation:
1) And YHWH spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,
2) “Among the sons of Israel everyone shall camp according to his group by the banner of the house of his fathers. They will camp surrounding the tent of meeting.
3) Those camping in east will be under the insignia of Judah according to his armies and the prince of the sons of Judah will be Nachshon ben Aminadab.
4) His army and their posts are 74,600.
5) And those camping with him will be the tribe of Issachar. The prince of the sons of Issachar is Nethanel ben Zoar.
6) And his army and his posts are 54,400.
7) The tribe of Zebulon: The prince of the sons of Zebulon is Eliab ben Chelon.
8) And his army and his posts are 57,400.
9) All of the posts of the camp of Judah are 186,400, according to their armies. They will be the first to break camp.
10) The insignia of the camp of Reuben will be in the south according to his armies. And the prince of the sons of Reuben is Elizor ben Shedaiur.
11) And his army and his posts are 46,500.
12) And those camping with him will be the tribe of Simeon. And the prince of the sons of Simeon is Shelumiel ben Zuri-Shaddai.
13) And his army and his posts are 59,600.
14) And the tribe of Gad. And the prince of the sons of Gad is Elisaph ben Ruel.
15) And his army and his posts are 45,650.
16) All of the posts of the camp and Reuben are 151,450 according to their armies. They will be the second to break camp.
17) The camp of the Levites in the middle of the camps will disassemble the tent of meeting, just as they camp, so shall they break camp, each with his hand upon their insignia.
18) The insignia of the camp of Ephraim according to their armies will be in the west. And the prince of the sons of Ephraim is Elishama ben Ammidhud.
19) And his army and their positions are 40,500.
20) And with him will be the tribe of Manasseh. And the prince of the sons of Manasseh is Gamliel ben Pedahzur.
21) And his army and their positions are 32,200.
22) And the tribe of Benjamin. And the prince of the sons of Benjamin is Abidan ben Gidoni.
23) And his army and their positions are 35,400.
24) All of the posts of the camp of Ephraim are 108,100 according to their armies. They were the third to break camp.
25) The insignia of the camp of Dan will be to the north according to their armies. And the prince of the sons of Dan is Achiezer ben Ammishaddai.
26) And his army and their posts are 62,700.
27) And those camping with him are the tribe of Asher. And the prince of the sons of Asher is Pagiel ben Ochran.
28) And his army and their posts are 41,500.
29) And the tribe of Naphtali. And the prince of the sons of Naphtali is Achira ben Enan.
30) And his army and their posts are 53,400.
31) All of the posts of the camp of Dan are 157,600. To the west they broke camp according to their insignia.”
32) These are those who were drafted of the sons of Israel according to the house of their fathers. All of those who were drafted of the camps according to their armies are 603,550.
33) But the Levites were not drafted in the midst of the sons of Israel, just as YHWH commanded Moses.
34) And the sons of Israel did just as YHWH commanded Moses. Thus they camped according to their posts and thus they broke camp each according to his tribe, according to the house of his fathers.

Text Critical Notes:
V. 2: “his group” is plural in Samaritanus.
V. 4: Samaritanus reads “its posts”. Sam. and L. agree in verses 6, 8, 11, 13, etc.
V. 7: Some Masoretic manuscripts, Sam. and the Peshitta add the copula at the opening of the verse, also in verses 14, 22, and 29.
V. 20: The opening may originally have read “And camping with him…” as in the other cases. Cf. LXX.
V. 31: BHS suggests reading “positions” as “armies,” as in e.g., v. 24. As no textual evidence for this change has been cited, any such corruption must have occurred very early in the transmission of the text in order to have become ubiquitous in the traditions.

Previous Post
Next Post
Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

  • Welcome to my blog!

    I hope you find the material here both entertaining and informative. Or at least one of those two. Or neither. Welcome to my blog!
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  • Follow Jonathan Robker: Exegete, Critic, Cook on WordPress.com
  • Archive

  • Twitter Timeline

%d bloggers like this: