The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Tribe of Issachar
Numbers 26:23–25 — The Tribe of Issachar. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
23These were the descendants of Issachar by their clans: The Tolaite clan from Tola, the Punite clan from Puvah,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
bə·nê yiś·śā·š·ḵār lə·miš·pə·ḥō·ṯām hat·tō·w·lā·‘î miš·pa·ḥaṯ tō·w·lā‘ hap·pū·nî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·p̄u·wāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
Sons-of Issachar by-their-clans: of-Tola, the Tolaite clan; of-Puvah, the Punite clan.
Where the English smooths the original
Pua, called also Phuvah , Genesis 46:13 ; as his brother Jashub , Numbers 26:24 , is called Job , Genesis 46:13 .Poole flags the two spelling variants between this census and the Genesis 46 list of Jacob's household.
This tribe was numbered next to Judah, because it was under his standard.On the camp-order behind the census sequence; Issachar marched in Judah's division (Numbers 2:5).
The sons of Issachar. As in Genesis 46:13 ; 1 Chronicles 7:1 , except that in Genesis we have Job instead of Jashub; the two names, however, appear to have the same meaning.
24the Jashubite clan from Jashub, and the Shimronite clan from Shimron.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hay·yā·šū·ḇî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·yā·šūḇ haš·šim·rō·nî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·šim·rōn
Literal — word-for-word from the original
of-Jashub, the Jashubite clan; of-Shimron, the Shimronite clan.
Where the English smooths the original
The two names have the same signification, as Job is derived from an Arabic word which signifies to return.Explaining how Genesis 46:13's "Job" and this verse's "Jashub" can be the same son — both rooted in the idea of returning.
Of Jashub, the family of the Jashubites: of Shimron, the family of the Shimronites.The Geneva text simply restates the verse, preserving the older spelling of the clan-names.
instead of Job another is called here JashubGill's note on the same Genesis 46 / Numbers 26 name-variant.
25These were the clans of Issachar, and their registration numbered 64,300.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’êl·leh miš·pə·ḥōṯ yiś·śā·š·ḵār lip̄·qu·ḏê·hem ’ar·bā·‘āh wə·šiš·šîm ’e·lep̄ ū·šə·lōš mê·’ō·wṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
These [were] the clans of Issachar, by-their-numbered-ones: four and-sixty thousand and-three hundred.
Where the English smooths the original
A great increase. Compare Numbers 2:6 .Poole notes the tribe's growth against its earlier muster.
the number of warlike men in it was 64,300; their increase since the last numbering of them is 9900.Gill gives the exact arithmetic of the gain over the Sinai census.
His justice and holiness in the sweeping judgments that reduced the ranks of some tribes; and His truth and faithfulness in the extraordinary increase of others so that the posterity of Israel continued a numerous people.JFB wrote this under Simeon (v. 12), whose ranks had collapsed; the principle they draw — judgment and faithfulness read off the same table of totals — applies directly to Issachar's gain set beside Simeon's loss, which is why it is cited here.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit is a fragment of a ledger: the tribe of Issachar inside the second wilderness census, taken on the plains of Moab a generation after Sinai. Four clans answer to four sons — Tola, Puvah, Jashub, Shimron — each introduced by the same Hebrew construct, bənê, "sons of," and ordered lə-mišpəḥōṯām, "clan by clan." John Gill notes the placement: "This tribe was numbered next to Judah, because it was under his standard" — the census follows the marching order of the camp (Numbers 2:5), not chance. The roll is not a crowd but a structure: tribe, clan, father's house.
Two of the four names carry an old textual seam, and the public-domain voices converge on it with unusual agreement. The Pulpit Commentary lines this list up against the others — "The sons of Issachar. As in Genesis 46:13 ; 1 Chronicles 7:1 , except that in Genesis we have Job instead of Jashub; the two names, however, appear to have the same meaning." Matthew Poole records both variants together: "Pua, called also Phuvah , Genesis 46:13 ; as his brother Jashub , Numbers 26:24 , is called Job , Genesis 46:13 ." Keil & Delitzsch reach for the etymology to reconcile them: "The two names have the same signification, as Job is derived from an Arabic word which signifies to return." The takeaway is honest and small: Scripture's own lists spell these clan-fathers two ways, and the older commentators do not paper over it — they name the difference and account for it.
The section closes the way every tribal section in the chapter closes — ’ēlleh, "these," then the muster. Issachar's pəqudîm, its "numbered ones," come to 64,300. The verb under "registration" is pāqaḏ, "to visit, to muster": the count is a visitation of the covenant people, men "able to go to war" (Numbers 26:2). John Gill does the arithmetic against the first census: "the number of warlike men in it was 64,300; their increase since the last numbering of them is 9900." Matthew Poole simply marks it — "A great increase." The tribe that numbered 54,400 at Sinai (Numbers 1:28–29) has grown, against the grain of forty wilderness years and the plague at Peor.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read the whole table of totals theologically: God's "justice and holiness in the sweeping judgments that reduced the ranks of some tribes; and His truth and faithfulness in the extraordinary increase of others so that the posterity of Israel continued a numerous people." The numbers are not filler. Set beside Simeon's collapse from 59,300 to 22,200, Issachar's gain testifies — in plain figures — that the God who judges also keeps His word to multiply Abraham's seed.
Held against the rule that Scripture alone is the final authority, three things stand out in this dry list — offered to be tested, not trusted:
The names are kept because the promise is kept. A census of Issachar exists only because the seed of Abraham is being counted into the land God swore to give. Each clan-name is a receipt against an ancient pledge (Genesis 15:5). JFB is right that the totals preach: increase here is faithfulness made countable.
Scripture is honest about its own variants. The text gives "Jashub" where Genesis 46 gives "Job," "Puvah" where Genesis spells it otherwise — and rather than hide it, the commentators expose and explain it. A book that records its own spelling-seams is a book confident enough to be checked, the Berean posture in miniature.
God's justice and mercy are written in the same ledger. The same chapter that grows Issachar by 9,900 shrinks Simeon by tens of thousands. The arithmetic refuses sentimentality: the LORD who is faithful to multiply is the same LORD who judged Peor.
This list is the opposite of an interruption in the story; it is the story, told in the one form a promise of innumerable seed can finally be checked against — a count. To read a census faithfully is to read God keeping His word one name at a time, and to let the falling totals confess His judgment as plainly as the rising ones confess His mercy. Test this against the text; keep only what the Word supports.
A census is a promise being kept out loud, one name at a time — that line is this tool's reading, not a verse.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The same four sons of Issachar are listed in the household that went down to Egypt (Genesis 46:13), here in the second census, and again in the post-conquest genealogy of 1 Chronicles 7:1 — Tola, Puvah/Pua, Jashub/Job, Shimron. The Pulpit Commentary and Keil & Delitzsch both line these lists up directly. It is a structural genealogical parallel, not a quotation: the same family carried across the canon, with the known spelling-variants Job/Jashub and Puvah/Pua intact.
Genesis 46:13 · 1 Chronicles 7:1
basis: Genealogical parallel list of the same family; shared rare lexemes H3485 Yissâˢkâr (in 40 vv), H8439 Tôwlâʻ (in 5 vv), H6312 Pûwʼâh (in 4 vv). Tiered structural rather than verbal because these are corresponding genealogies, not a citation of one by another.
Generations later, Israel is delivered by "Tola son of Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar" (Judges 10:1). Both clan-names of Numbers 26:23 — Tola (H8439) and Puah/Puvah — surface together in this one judge, who "arose to save Israel" and judged twenty-three years. The recurrence of these two rare proper names side by side is a genuine verbal link: the Verifier confirms H8439 Tôwlâʻ occurs in only five verses canon-wide, so its reappearance is no coincidence of common vocabulary.
Judges 10:1 · 1 Chronicles 7:2
basis: Rare shared lexeme H8439 Tôwlâʻ (in only 5 vv canon-wide), with Pûwʼâh (H6312, 4 vv) recurring alongside it in Judges 10:1 — a low-frequency verbal correspondence, not shared common vocabulary. 1 Chronicles 7:2 also carries H8439 Tôwlâʻ.
Issachar's 64,300 here is set against its 54,400 at the first Sinai census (Numbers 1:28–29) — an increase of 9,900 that Gill and Poole both note. The two musters share the framing vocabulary (Issachar, mišpāḥâ "clan," pāqaḏ "to muster") and the same purpose: numbering the men able to go to war. This is a structural pairing of the two wilderness censuses, the book's own before-and-after.
Numbers 1:28 · Numbers 1:29
basis: Shared framing lexemes H3485 Yissâˢkâr (in 40 vv) and H4940 mishpâchâh (in 224 vv, a common term); same census structure and purpose. Common vocabulary, so tiered structural rather than verbal.
The clan-father Šimrôn (H8110) of v. 24 shares his exact spelling with a Canaanite royal city — Shimron, whose king joins Jabin's northern coalition against Joshua (Joshua 11:1) and which later falls within Zebulun's allotment (Joshua 19:15). The Verifier matches the identical Strong's number, but the referents differ: one is a man of Issachar, the other a town in the north. Because the shared lexeme links a person to a place — a homonym, not the same entity — the connection is left flagged rather than asserted as a real thread.
Joshua 11:1 · Joshua 19:15
basis: Shared lexeme H8110 Shimrôwn (in 5 vv), but the referents are distinct — Shimron the son of Issachar here vs. Shimron the Canaanite city in Joshua. Same spelling, different entity; the verbal match does not establish a genuine cross-reference. Flagged on purpose.
The reason a tribe is counted at all is the oath to Abraham: "I will surely multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and the sand on the seashore" (Genesis 22:17). The New Testament looks back at exactly this and reads the swelling totals as the oath kept — "and so from one man, and him as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore" (Hebrews 11:12). Issachar's 64,300, up 9,900 on the wilderness years, is one line of that arithmetic. This is a thematic, not a verbal, link: it spans Testaments and languages (Hebrew census ↔ Greek epistle), so it rests on the shared promise-of-innumerable-seed motif, never on a shared Strong's number.
Genesis 22:17 · Hebrews 11:12
basis: Shared theological motif — the census embodies the Abrahamic promise of multiplied seed (Genesis 22:17), which Hebrews 11:12 expressly declares fulfilled. Cross-Testament (Hebrew ↔ Greek), so it cannot and does not claim a shared lexeme; tiered structural/thematic, never verbal, by rule.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
A census of Israel is the visible accounting of God's oath to Abraham — "I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth" (Genesis 13:16). Each name on the Issachar roll is a portion of that promise made countable. The line runs to the One in whom the promise to Abraham finally lands: "the seed... who is Christ" (Galatians 3:16), in whom "all the families of the earth" are blessed (Genesis 12:3). The numbered tribes are an installment; the Seed is the fulfillment.
Genesis 13:16 · Galatians 3:16
The clan of Tola named here produces, generations on, a deliverer: "Tola... arose to save Israel" (Judges 10:1). Every judge who rises to save is a partial, failing figure of the Savior whose very name is "the LORD saves" — the deliverers of the book of Judges leave Israel needing rescue again, pointing past themselves to the one Deliverer who saves "to the uttermost" (Hebrews 7:25). This is a figural reading, not a claim the text makes of Tola directly; held as suggestive, not certain.
Judges 10:1 · Hebrews 7:25
The census takes a pəqudîm, a roll of "numbered/visited ones" (pāqaḏ). The motif of being counted among God's people runs forward to the register the New Testament calls "the book of life" (Philippians 4:3; Revelation 21:27), where the names that matter are those written in by the Lamb. The wilderness muster of fighting men foreshadows the deeper enrollment — not who can go to war, but whose name is kept by Christ.
Philippians 4:3 · Revelation 21:27
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
This unit is a census fragment — the tribe of Issachar in the second wilderness numbering (Numbers 26). The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), CC0. The named voices are public-domain (Poole 1685; Gill 1746–63; Keil & Delitzsch 1860s; the Pulpit Commentary 1880s; the Geneva Study Bible 1599; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown 1871), quoted verbatim and attributed in place. Two honesty notes specific to this unit: (1) The repeated Henry/Barnes/JFB block-comment on Numbers 26:1–51 is a section comment, not verse-specific; the genuinely verse-bound observations come from Poole, Keil & Delitzsch, the Pulpit Commentary, and Gill, which is why those carry most of the load here. (2) Several thread badges rest on shared proper names. Where the name is rare and points to the same family (Tola, Pua), the link is real; where the same spelling points to two different things (Shimron the man vs. Shimron the town), the link is flagged rather than asserted. The transliterations, literal renderings, divergence notes, and the 9,900 increase computed against Numbers 1:28–29 are this tool's own work (⚙) — careful but fallible; check them against a lexicon (BDB, HALOT) and the Hebrew text. "Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." (Acts 17:11)
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)