The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Tribe of Benjamin
Numbers 26:38–41 — The Tribe of Benjamin. 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.
38These were the descendants of Benjamin by their clans: The Belaite clan from Bela, the Ashbelite clan from Ashbel, the Ahiramite clan from Ahiram,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
bə·nê ḇin·yā·min lə·miš·pə·ḥō·ṯām hab·bal·‘î miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·ḇe·la‘ hā·’aš·bê·lî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·’aš·bêl hā·’ă·ḥî·rā·mî miš·pa·ḥaṯ la·’ă·ḥî·rām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
The sons of Benjamin by their clans: of Bela, the Belaite clan; of Ashbel, the Ashbelite clan; of Ahiram, the Ahiramite clan;
Where the English smooths the original
The sons of Benjamin were ten, Genesis 46:21 , whereof only five are here mentioned, the rest probably, together with their families, being extinct ere this time. Ashbel, called also Jediael , 1 Chronicles 7:6 . Ahiram , called also Aharah , 1 Chronicles 8:1 and Ehi , Genesis 46:21 .
The sons of Benjamin. These formed seven families, five named after sons, two after grandsons. The list in Genesis 46:21 contains three names here omitted, and the rest are much changed in form.Poole reckons "only five" sons named; the Pulpit counts "seven families" by adding the two grandson-houses of v.40 — the same data, two ways of totting it.
The children of Benjamin formed seven families, five of whom were founded by his sons, and two by grandsons.
39the Shuphamite clan from Shupham, and the Huphamite clan from Hupham.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
haš·šū·p̄ā·mî miš·pa·ḥaṯ liš·p̄ū·p̄ām ha·ḥū·p̄ā·mî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·ḥū·p̄ām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
of Shupham, the Shuphamite clan; of Hupham, the Huphamite clan.
Where the English smooths the original
Shupham, called also Shuppim , 1 Chronicles 7:12 , and Muppim , Genesis 46:21 . Hupham, called Huppim , Genesis 46:21 1 Chronicles 7:12 .
the names of the five sons mentioned vary a little from the names of them in Genesis 46:21 instead of Ehi, it is here Ahiram; and instead of Huppim and Muppim, it is here Shupham and Hupham
Of Shupham, the family of the Shuphamites: of Hupham, the family of the Huphamites.
40And the descendants of Bela from Ard and Naaman were the Ardite clan from Ard and the Naamite clan from Naaman.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yih·yū ḇə·nê- ḇe·la‘ ’ard wə·na·‘ă·mān hā·’ar·dî miš·pa·ḥaṯ han·na·‘ă·mî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·na·‘ă·mān
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And the sons of Bela were Ard and Naaman: the Ardite clan; of Naaman, the Naamite clan.
Where the English smooths the original
Ard, or Arde , and by transposition, Addar , 1 Chronicles 8:3 .
and from the eldest of them sprang two other families, the Ardite and Naamite, from Ard and Naaman, two sons of Bela
And the sons of Bela were Ard and Naaman: of Ard, the family of the Ardites: and of Naaman, the family of the Naamites.
41These were the clans of Benjamin, and their registration numbered 45,600.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’êl·leh lə·miš·pə·ḥō·ṯām ḇə·nê- ḇin·yā·min ū·p̄ə·qu·ḏê·hem ḥă·miš·šāh wə·’ar·bā·‘îm ’e·lep̄ wə·šêš mê·’ō·wṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
These were the sons of Benjamin by their clans, and their numbered ones: forty-five thousand six hundred.
Where the English smooths the original
These are the sons of Benjamin after their families: and they that were numbered of them were forty and five thousand and six hundred.
the number of men in these families was 45,600, so that here was an increase of 10,200.
Thus God's justice and holiness, as well as His truth and faithfulness, were strikingly displayed: 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's note is keyed to Simeon (v.12) but states the principle the Benjamin total illustrates from the other side: this tribe is among the "others" whose increase displays the same faithfulness.
We have here the families registered, as well as the tribes. The total was nearly the same as when numbered at mount Sinai.Henry's note governs the whole chapter (26:1-51); on Benjamin in particular the "nearly the same" total holds at the level of the nation while the individual tribe swings — Benjamin up 10,200, Simeon sharply down.
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.
Benjamin's entry in the second census is short and, on its face, a bare list: hab·bal·‘î, hā·’aš·bê·lî, hā·’ă·ḥî·rā·mî — Belaite, Ashbelite, Ahiramite, and the rest. But the names will not sit still across the canon, and the older commentators refuse to pretend they do. Matthew Poole counts the cost plainly: "The sons of Benjamin were ten, Genesis 46:21, whereof only five are here mentioned, the rest probably, together with their families, being extinct ere this time," and he tracks the survivors through their aliases — "Ahiram, called also Aharah, 1 Chronicles 8:1 and Ehi, Genesis 46:21." John Gill notices the same drift at the word level: "the names of the five sons mentioned vary a little from the names of them in Genesis 46:21 instead of Ehi, it is here Ahiram; and instead of Huppim and Muppim, it is here Shupham and Hupham." The Pulpit Commentary does the bookkeeping — "These formed seven families, five named after sons, two after grandsons. The list in Genesis 46:21 contains three names here omitted, and the rest are much changed in form" — and elsewhere in the same note concedes what honest harmonizing cannot escape: that "the various genealogies of Benjamin cannot be reconciled as they stand." The provenance of each claim is exactly what it appears to be: Poole's and Gill's are name-by-name source-comparisons against Genesis and Chronicles; the Pulpit's "seven families" is an arithmetic of the list itself.
The registry is verbless until v.40, where a single wayyiqtol breaks the rhythm: way·yih·yū ḇə·nê ḇe·la‘, "and the sons of Bela were Ard and Naaman." Of all Benjamin's sons, only Bela's house generates a named further generation, and the Geneva Study Bible renders the branching cleanly: "And the sons of Bela were Ard and Naaman: of Ard, the family of the Ardites: and of Naaman, the family of the Naamites." Gill reads the genealogy's logic: "from the eldest of them sprang two other families, the Ardite and Naamite, from Ard and Naaman, two sons of Bela" — Bela the firstborn is the only son ranked highly enough to be subdivided. Poole again catches a name in transit: "Ard, or Arde, and by transposition, Addar, 1 Chronicles 8:3" — a scribal metathesis, not a second man. Two warnings sit under this verse for anyone chasing cross-references. The Bela here (H1106) is not Bela king of Edom (Genesis 36:32) nor Bela/Zoar the city (Genesis 14:2), though all three share the Strong's number; and the Naaman here (H5283) is not Naaman the Aramean of 2 Kings 5, though they too share it. The lexeme is identical; the person is not.
The unit closes as it opened, with ’êl·leh ("these") sealing the frame, and then a number recited the old way — "five and forty thousand and six hundred." The participle that governs it, ū·p̄ə·qu·ḏê·hem, "their mustered ones," is from pāqad: to visit, to call to account, to muster for war. This is no idle headcount; it is the enrollment of the generation that will cross over. Matthew Henry sets the chapter's frame at the national scale — "We have here the families registered, as well as the tribes. The total was nearly the same as when numbered at mount Sinai" — and the steadiness of that grand total is exactly what makes the swing within it striking. John Gill sets Benjamin's figure against the first census: "the number of men in these families was 45,600, so that here was an increase of 10,200" — Benjamin grew from 35,400 at Sinai. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, commenting on the reduced tribes, state the double principle the whole chapter enacts: "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." Benjamin stands on the increase side of that ledger. The provenance is clean: Henry's note governs all of 26:1-51; Gill's increase is plain subtraction against Numbers 1:37; JFB's theology of the census is keyed to Simeon's loss but names the rule that Benjamin's gain illustrates from the other side.
Read under Sola Scriptura and tested against the text alone, this little roll of unpronounceable houses does a quiet and stubborn work: it insists that the covenant runs through names, not numbers — even names so worn by transmission that Ehi, Ahiram, and Aharah may be one man, and the registers frankly disagree. God does not number a crowd; He musters households, each tied by bēn to a father, each accountable under pāqad. That five of Benjamin's ten sons have simply vanished by this census (Poole's "extinct ere this time") is not hidden; the canon lets the gaps show. And yet Benjamin, the youngest and least, comes up 10,200 stronger than at Sinai while Simeon collapses — the same God, the same wilderness, justice and faithfulness reckoned in the same column of figures. The honest reading does not paper over the genealogies that "cannot be reconciled as they stand"; it lets the seams testify that this is a remembered record, not a manufactured one, and that the One who visits His people to muster them for the land knows each worn name on the roll.
God does not number a crowd; He musters households — and even the names worn smooth by transmission, He still keeps on the roll. (a reader's line, not Scripture)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The same Benjamin list stands at the descent into Egypt. The Verifier records the shared rare lexemes ʼAshbêl (H788, present in only 3 verses in the whole canon) and Belaʻ (H1106, 14 verses), alongside Binyāmîn (H1144) — the low frequency of Ashbel and Bela makes this a genuine verbal link, not a coincidence of common words. Yet the same passage is the one the commentators say will not harmonize: Genesis 46:21 names ten sons where Numbers names five, and gives Ehi, Muppim, and Huppim where Numbers reads Ahiram, Shupham, and Hupham. The link is verbal and real; the agreement between the rolls is partial and disputed.
Genesis 46:21
basis: Verifier: shared lexemes H788 ʼAshbêl (3 vv) and H1106 Belaʻ (14 vv), both rare, plus H1144 Binyâmîyn — same Benjamite genealogy, same referents; the low frequency of Ashbel/Bela makes this verbal rather than merely thematic
1 Chronicles 8:1 reopens the Benjamin genealogy and shares the rare Belaʻ (H1106) and ʼAshbêl (H788); 1 Chronicles 8:5 supplies the firmest hook of all, the lexeme Shᵉphûwphâm (H8197), which the Verifier finds in only two verses in the entire canon — Numbers 26:39 and 1 Chronicles 8:5. A lexeme that rare is as good as a fingerprint for a verbal link. These are the same Benjamite houses, re-rolled centuries later; Poole and Keil & Delitzsch route the variant names (Aharah for Ahiram) precisely through this Chronicles register.
1 Chronicles 8:1 · 1 Chronicles 8:5 · 1 Chronicles 7:6
basis: Verifier: shared rare lexemes H8197 Shᵉphûwphâm (only 2 vv canon-wide) at 26:39→1 Chr 8:5, plus H1106 Belaʻ (14 vv) and H788 ʼAshbêl (3 vv) at 26:38→1 Chr 8:1 — same Benjamite descent group
1 Chronicles 7:7 also tallies Benjamite houses, and the Verifier flags it — but the only shared lexemes are châmêsh (H2568, "five," in 272 verses) and ʼeleph (H505, "thousand," in 391 verses). These are among the commonest words in Hebrew; two muster-rolls will share them by the mere fact of counting. The Verifier itself downgrades this to structural / thematic, and rightly: it is the genre of the war-census that links the passages, the same act of pāqad-mustering, not any quotation. We claim no more than the pattern.
1 Chronicles 7:7 · Numbers 1:37
basis: Verifier: shared lexemes are only the high-frequency numerals H2568 châmêsh (272 vv) and H505 ʼeleph (391 vv) — common counting words; the link is the shared census/muster genre, not a verbal quotation
The Verifier surfaces 2 Kings 5:1 (Naaman the Aramean) and Genesis 14:2; 36:32 (Bela) as candidates because they share the Strong's numbers Naʻămân (H5283) and Belaʻ (H1106) with Numbers 26:40. But Strong's numbers index lemmas, not persons: this Naaman is Bela's grandson in Benjamin, not the leprous Syrian commander of 2 Kings; this Bela is the firstborn of Benjamin, not Bela son of Beor who reigned in Edom (Genesis 36:32) nor Bela/Zoar the city of the plain (Genesis 14:2). The shared lexeme is real; the referent is not. Any cross-reference built on the lexeme alone here would be false, so it is flagged — verify the referent, not just the number.
2 Kings 5:1 · Genesis 36:32 · Genesis 14:2
basis: Verifier matches on shared Strong's H5283 Naʻămân and H1106 Belaʻ, but these are homonyms across distinct referents (Benjamite grandson vs. Naaman the Aramean; Benjamite Bela vs. Bela king of Edom / Bela=Zoar) — lexeme shared, person not; the link must be rejected as a personal cross-reference
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Benjamin is Jacob's youngest, born in the land, the smallest of the tribes — and yet at this muster he comes up 10,200 stronger than at Sinai (Gill: "an increase of 10,200"), while greater tribes are cut down. The Scriptures make Benjamin's smallness a recurring sign of grace: from this least tribe comes Israel's first king (1 Samuel 9:21, where Saul calls Benjamin "the smallest of the tribes"), and from it the apostle Paul (Philippians 3:5; Romans 11:1), through whom the gospel runs to the nations. The figural reading — that God's election and increase rest on the least, prefiguring the Christ who is "despised and rejected" yet exalted, and who chooses "the things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are" (1 Corinthians 1:28) — is a widely-held typological pattern, not a verbal link; it reads the census theologically, drawing the line the prophets and apostles draw, not from a shared Hebrew lexeme.
Philippians 3:5 · Romans 11:1 · 1 Corinthians 1:28
This census enrolls the generation that, after forty years, will at last enter the land — a remembered people, each house tied by name to a father and "visited" (pāqad) by God for the inheritance. The figure of a written roll of the redeemed who possess the promise runs forward to "the Lamb's book of life" (Revelation 21:27) and to the Shepherd who "calls his own sheep by name" (John 10:3) — the One who, like the God who musters Benjamin's worn-down names, loses none that the Father has given (John 6:39). This is a typological reading of the census as a foreshadowing of the enrollment of the redeemed; as a cross-Testament (Hebrew↔Greek) connection it cannot rest on a shared Strong's number, and is offered as figural, argued from the canon's own imagery of the named and mustered people of God, not as a verbal quotation.
John 10:3 · John 6:39 · 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 is a genealogical census fragment — the Benjamin entry of the second muster (Numbers 26:38-41). Three honesty notes specific to it. (1) The registers genuinely conflict. The Benjamin lists in Genesis 46:21, Numbers 26, and 1 Chronicles 7-8 differ in the number of sons (ten vs. five vs. more), in spelling (Ehi / Ahiram / Aharah; Muppim / Shupham; Huppim / Hupham), and in generation (Naaman a son in Genesis, a grandson here). The commentators do not hide this — the Pulpit Commentary states outright that they "cannot be reconciled as they stand." We have surfaced the variants (Poole, Gill, K&D) rather than smoothing them. (2) The Strong's-number trap. The Verifier links by shared lexeme, which is correct for Hebrew↔Hebrew verbal work but blind to homonyms: H1106 Belaʻ names three different referents (the Benjamite, the Edomite king, the city Zoar) and H5283 Naʻămân names two (the Benjamite grandson and the Aramean of 2 Kings 5). We have flagged these rather than claim them, because the lexeme is shared but the person is not. (3) Common numerals are weak basis. The 1 Chronicles 7:7 candidate shares only châmêsh and ʼeleph — high-frequency counting words — so it is held at structural/thematic, not verbal. (4) The JFB voice on Numbers 26 is, in the source, keyed to Simeon (v.12); we use it for the principle of justice-and-faithfulness it states, noting in the editorial_note that Benjamin illustrates the faithfulness side. No Christ link in this unit is claimed as verbal; both are figural/typological and marked widely-held, read from the canon's pattern, never from a Hebrew↔Greek Strong's match.
✦ = 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)