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The Levites Numbered
Numbers 26:57–62 — The Levites Numbered. 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.
57Now these were the Levites numbered by their clans: The Gershonite clan from Gershon, the Kohathite clan from Kohath, and the Merarite clan from Merari.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·’êl·leh hal·lê·wî p̄ə·qū·ḏê lə·miš·pə·ḥō·ṯām hag·gê·rə·šun·nî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·ḡê·rə·šō·wn haq·qə·hā·ṯî miš·pa·ḥaṯ liq·hāṯ ham·mə·rā·rî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lim·rā·rî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-these [are] the-Levite, those-mustered by-their-clans: the-Gershonite — clan of-Gershon; the-Kohathite — clan of-Kohath; the-Merarite — clan of-Merari.”
Where the English smooths the original
Levi was God's tribe; therefore it was not numbered with the rest, but alone. It came not under the sentence, that none of them should enter Canaan excepting Caleb and Joshua.
The enumeration of the different Levitical families into which the three leading families of Levi, that were founded by his three sons Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, were divided, is not complete, but is broken off in Numbers 26:58 after the notice of five different families, for the purpose of tracing once more the descent of Moses and Aaron, the heads not of this tribe only, but of the whole nationK&D's overview of the whole sub-unit; quoted here at its head.
The census of the Levites. They were numbered separately from the secular tribes, because they were not, as a tribe, to possess any land.Excerpted from the note on 57–62.
58These were the families of the Levites: The Libnite clan, the Hebronite clan, the Mahlite clan, the Mushite clan, and the Korahite clan. Now Kohath was the father of Amram,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’êl·leh miš·pə·ḥōṯ lê·wî hal·liḇ·nî miš·pa·ḥaṯ ha·ḥeḇ·rō·nî miš·pa·ḥaṯ ham·maḥ·lî miš·pa·ḥaṯ ham·mū·šî miš·pa·ḥaṯ haq·qā·rə·ḥî miš·pa·ḥaṯ ū·qə·hāṯ hō·w·liḏ ’eṯ- ‘am·rām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“These [are] the-clans of-Levi: the-Libnite clan, the-Hebronite clan, the-Mahlite clan, the-Mushite clan, the-Korahite clan. And-Kohath begot Amram.”
Where the English smooths the original
The families of the Levites are here numbered by themselves, because they were not to have a distinct share of the land, whence it is that they are not so distinctly and exactly mentioned as the other tribes, but confusedly and imperfectly, some of them being wholly omitted here.
The Libnites were Gershonites ( Numbers 3:21 ), the Hebronites and Korathites (or Korahites) were Kohathites ( Numbers 3:19 ; Numbers 16:1 ), the Mahlites and Mushites were Merarites ( Numbers 3:33 ).
The verse appears to be separate from Numbers 26:57 , and to be derived from a different source.A source-critical observation, recorded as the voice's own claim.
59and Amram’s wife was named Jochebed. She was also a daughter of Levi, born to Levi in Egypt. To Amram she bore Aaron, Moses, and their sister Miriam.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
‘am·rām ’ê·šeṯ wə·šêm yō·w·ḵe·ḇeḏ baṯ- lê·wî ’ă·šer yā·lə·ḏāh ’ō·ṯāh lə·lê·wî bə·miṣ·rā·yim lə·‘am·rām wat·tê·leḏ ’eṯ- ’a·hă·rōn wə·’eṯ- mō·šeh wə·’êṯ ’ă·ḥō·ṯām mir·yām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-the-name-of Amram's wife [was] Jochebed, daughter-of Levi, whom she-bore to-Levi in-Egypt; and-she-bore to-Amram Aaron and Moses and-their-sister Miriam.”
Where the English smooths the original
whom her mother bare - literally, "whom she bare;" the subject is wanting, and the verb is in the feminine gender. The words "her mother" are merely conjectural. The text is probably imperfect.
Her mother, to wit, Levi’s wife, which must necessarily be understood.Poole supplies the missing subject; set against Barnes and Keil, who refuse to.
It cannot be Levi's wife, as Jarchi, Abenezra, and others suppose; for Jochebed, the mother of Moses, was not a daughter of Levi in the strict sense of the word, but only a Levitess or descendant of Levi, who lived about 300 years after Levi
Some writers have supposed that Jochebed was the granddaughter, or possibly even some more remote descendant of Levi, and that Amram, the father of Moses, was not the same as Amram, the son of Kohath.
60Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar were born to Aaron,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
nā·ḏāḇ wə·’eṯ- ’ă·ḇî·hū ’eṯ- ’el·‘ā·zār wə·’eṯ- ’î·ṯā·mār way·yiw·wā·lêḏ lə·’a·hă·rōn ’eṯ-
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-there-was-born to-Aaron Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and-Ithamar.”
Where the English smooths the original
And unto Aaron was born Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.The Geneva text presents the verse itself; its bare restatement underscores the roster.
Sons of Aaron: cf. Numbers 3:2 and Numbers 3:4 ; Exodus 6:23 ; Leviticus 10:1 , Leviticus 10:2 .K&D simply chains the cross-references; the chain itself tells the story.
61but Nadab and Abihu died when they offered unauthorized fire before the LORD.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
nā·ḏāḇ wa·’ă·ḇî·hū way·yā·māṯ bə·haq·rî·ḇām zā·rāh ’êš- lip̄·nê Yah·weh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-Nadab and-Abihu died when-they-brought-near strange fire before YHWH.”
Where the English smooths the original
And Nadab and Abihu died, when they offered strange fire before the LORD.The Geneva note keeps the older “strange fire,” nearer the Hebrew zūr than the modern “unauthorized.”
61 . See on Numbers 3:4 .Cambridge points back to the fuller treatment at Numbers 3:4 — the same death, recorded in the same terms.
Aaron had four sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, the two first of which died for offering strange fire to the Lord, and the two last were now living
62The registration of the Levites totaled 23,000, every male a month old or more; they were not numbered among the other Israelites, because no inheritance was given to them among the Israelites.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
p̄ə·qu·ḏê·hem way·yih·yū šə·lō·šāh wə·‘eś·rîm ’e·lep̄ kāl- zā·ḵār ḥō·ḏeš mib·ben- wā·mā·‘ə·lāh kî lō hā·ṯə·pā·qə·ḏū bə·ṯō·wḵ bə·nê yiś·rā·’êl kî lō- na·ḥă·lāh nit·tan lā·hem bə·ṯō·wḵ bə·nê yiś·rā·’êl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-their-mustered-ones were three and-twenty thousand, every male from-a-month-old and-upward; for they-were-not mustered among the-sons-of Israel, because no-inheritance was-given to-them among the-sons-of Israel.”
Where the English smooths the original
The total number of male Levites, 23,000, shows an increase of 1,000 on the number at Sinai Numbers 3:39 . It is doubtless to be taken as a round number; and, as before, includes the male children from a month old and upward, as well as the male adults.
The smallness of the increase in a tribe which was excepted from the general doom at Kadesh, and which in other ways was so favourably situated, seems to point to some considerable losses. It is possible that portions of the tribe suffered severely for their share in the rebellion of Korah
The Levites were not mustered along with the rest of the tribes of Israel, because the mustering took place with especial reference to the conquest of Canaan, and the Levites were not to receive any territory as a tribe (see at Numbers 18:20 ).
twenty and three thousand—so that there was an increase of a thousand (Nu 3:39). males from a month old and upwardJFB ties the figure straight to the Sinai count; the one voice in this unit drawn from the Critical and Explanatory Commentary.
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 great census of chapter 26 has been a war-roll — every tribe numbered “from twenty years old and upward, all who can go to war” (26:2). Then it stops, and Levi is taken by itself, on a wholly different principle. Matthew Henry puts the reason in a sentence: “Levi was God's tribe; therefore it was not numbered with the rest, but alone.” Cambridge says the same dryly — they were “numbered separately from the secular tribes, because they were not, as a tribe, to possess any land.” The Hebrew underlines the apartness: the muster-verb pāqad (פְקוּדֵי) opens v. 57 and closes the unit in v. 62, a bracket around a people God reviews on His own terms. The list itself is openly imperfect. Matthew Poole notices that because the Levites “were not to have a distinct share of the land,” they are recorded “confusedly and imperfectly, some of them being wholly omitted here” — Shimei and Uzziel drop out. The Pulpit Commentary maps the five surviving clans back onto Levi's three sons; Cambridge goes further and judges that v. 58 “appears to be separate from Numbers 26:57, and to be derived from a different source.” The honest grain of the text is a roster that does not pretend to completeness.
Of the five clans, only Kohath's is followed to its end — and Keil names the reason: the break comes “for the purpose of tracing once more the descent of Moses and Aaron, the heads not of this tribe only, but of the whole nation.” The genealogy lands on a woman: Jochebed, “daughter of Levi,” who bore Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. And here the verse turns difficult. The clause “whom she bore to Levi” has no stated subject. Barnes is blunt: “the subject is wanting, and the verb is in the feminine gender. The words ‘her mother’ are merely conjectural. The text is probably imperfect.” Poole supplies it anyway — “her mother, to wit, Levi's wife, which must necessarily be understood.” But Keil refuses: it cannot be Levi's wife, “for Jochebed… was not a daughter of Levi in the strict sense of the word, but only a Levitess or descendant of Levi, who lived about 300 years after Levi.” Ellicott records the same crux — that Jochebed may be “the granddaughter, or possibly even some more remote descendant of Levi.” Three centuries cannot fit into the four named generations Kohath–Amram–Moses; the genealogy is compressed, telescoped, as Hebrew genealogies often are. The voices do not paper over it. Neither should the synthesis.
Aaron's four sons are listed (v. 60) — and then two of them are struck through (v. 61). The same census that names the priesthood names its tragedy. Nadab and Abihu died when they offered strange fire before the LORD. Gill keeps the older, sharper rendering: “the two first of which died for offering strange fire to the Lord, and the two last were now living.” The Hebrew word is zārâ (זָרָה, root zūr) — not just “unauthorized” but alien, intrusive, not-belonging; the Geneva Bible's “strange fire” is nearer the bone. They died liḏənê YHWH, “to the face of the LORD” — the same men who, with seventy elders, had once gone up Sinai and “saw the God of Israel” (Exodus 24:9–10). Nearness magnifies the trespass. Cambridge simply points back: “See on Numbers 3:4.” The lesson the genealogy quietly carries is that priestly descent is no shield; the fire that consecrates can consume.
The unit closes on its own bracket: 23,000 — “every male a month old or more.” Barnes notes the arithmetic, “an increase of 1,000 on the number at Sinai,” and reads it as a round number. The Pulpit Commentary hears something more somber in so small a gain: in a tribe “excepted from the general doom at Kadesh” the meagre increase “seems to point to some considerable losses” — perhaps Korah's rebellion thinning the Kohathite ranks. But the verse's last word is not loss; it is vocation. Keil states the principle cleanly: the Levites were mustered apart “because the mustering took place with especial reference to the conquest of Canaan, and the Levites were not to receive any territory as a tribe.” The reason the text gives — “because no inheritance was given to them among the Israelites” — is the same reason God gave Aaron in Numbers 18:20: “I am your portion and your inheritance.” The tribe with no land is the tribe whose land is God.
Read whole and under Scripture's own authority, this dry register of clans does three things worth testing against the text. First, it counts what the world would not count. The fighting-tribes are mustered from twenty years old; the Levites from one month — nursing infants on the roll of God. A tribe defined not by sword-strength but by belonging is numbered by a different ruler altogether. Second, it tells the truth about its own heroes. The same paragraph that gives us Moses, Aaron, and Miriam also records Jochebed's untraceable subject, the telescoped generations, the omitted clans, and — unflinching — the death of Nadab and Abihu for strange fire. Scripture writes its genealogies without airbrushing them; the Berean habit of checking is invited by the text's own honesty. Third, it grounds dignity in dispossession. The Levites' lack of land-inheritance is stated as their reason for being counted apart — and that lack is, elsewhere, named their treasure (Numbers 18:20). The pattern points forward: a people whose inheritance is not land but the LORD, and a Servant who “had nowhere to lay his head” yet was given “the name above every name.” This is offered as a reading to be weighed, not a verdict to be trusted.
The tribe with no inheritance is the tribe whose inheritance is the LORD — dispossession turned into portion.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The clan-roll of vv. 57–58 reproduces, almost word for word, the Levitical census of Numbers 3 — Gershon, Kohath, Merari and their sub-clans. The verbal overlap is dense and specific: not only the common mishpāḥâ (“clan,” in 224 verses) but the rare gentilics Gêrəšunnî (12 vv), Qŏhâṯî (15 vv), Mêrârî (3 vv), Machlî (2 vv) and Mûshî (2 vv). The two musters bracket the wilderness generation: the same families counted at the start are counted again at the threshold of the land.
Numbers 26:57 · Numbers 26:58 · Numbers 3:21 · Numbers 3:27 · Numbers 3:33
basis: Verifier (Numbers 26:58 ↔ Numbers 3:33): shared rare lexemes H4188 Mûwšî (in 2 vv), H4250 Mačlî (in 2 vv); plus (26:57 ↔ 3:21) H1649 Gêrᵉšunnî (12 vv), H1648 Gêrᵉšôwn (18 vv), and (26:57 ↔ 3:27) H6956 Qŏhâţî (15 vv), H6955 Qᵉhâţ (29 vv). Hebrew↔Hebrew verbal link on low-frequency clan-names.
Verse 59 sets the parentage of Moses and Aaron — Amram and Jochebed — into the muster, and the same cluster of names recurs verbatim wherever Scripture rehearses the Levitical line: Exodus 6:20 and 1 Chronicles 6:3. The link rests on a stack of rare shared names: Yôwkeḇeḏ (Jochebed, in just 2 verses of the whole canon), ʻAmrâm (12 vv), Miryâm (Miriam, 13 vv), alongside Aaron and Moses. These are not thematic parallels but the same persons named in the same genealogical formula — the family tree of the exodus, carried through three books.
Numbers 26:59 · Exodus 6:20 · 1 Chronicles 6:3
basis: Verifier (Numbers 26:59 ↔ Exodus 6:20): shared H3115 Yôwkebed (in 2 vv, rare), H6019 ʻAmrâm (12 vv), H175 ʼAhărôwn, H3205 yâlad, H4872 Môsheh; and (26:59 ↔ 1 Chronicles 6:3) H6019 ʻAmrâm, H4813 Miryâm (13 vv), H175, H4872. Hebrew↔Hebrew verbal link on low-frequency proper names.
Verse 61's terse obituary — “Nadab and Abihu died when they offered strange fire before the LORD” — is the census's compressed citation of the narrative in Leviticus 10. The Verifier confirms the link on the very word that makes the offense: zūr (H2114, “strange / alien”), the adjective on “fire” in both texts, together with the names Nadab and Abihu and the offering-verb qāraḇ. This is not a loose allusion but a deliberate verbal back-reference; the genealogy quotes the judgment-scene's own vocabulary. Numbers 3:4 records the same event in the same terms.
Numbers 26:60 · Numbers 26:61 · Leviticus 10:1 · Numbers 3:4
basis: Verifier (Numbers 26:61 ↔ Leviticus 10:1): shared H2114 zūwr (the rare “strange” on “fire,” in 76 vv but pointed here as the shared judgment-term), H30 ʼĂbîyhûwʼ (12 vv), H5070 Nâdâb (20 vv), H7126 qârab; and (26:60 ↔ Numbers 3:4 / 3:2) H30, H5070, H385 ʼîythâmâr (20 vv), H499 ʼElʻâzâr. Hebrew↔Hebrew verbal link.
The reason clause of v. 62 — “because no inheritance was given to them among the Israelites” — ties this census to the standing law of Numbers 18:20 (“you shall have no inheritance in their land… I am your portion”) and to its execution in Joshua 13:14, 33 (“the LORD God of Israel is their inheritance”). The shared vocabulary — naḥălâ (“inheritance,” 191 vv), nāṯan (“give”), and the negation lōʼ — marks a structural-legal motif, not a quotation: the same principle of Levitical landlessness stated in law, repeated in census, and carried out in the conquest.
Numbers 26:62 · Numbers 18:20 · Joshua 13:14 · Joshua 13:33
basis: Verifier (Numbers 26:62 ↔ Numbers 18:20): shared H5159 nachălâh (191 vv), H8432 tâvek, H3808 lôʼ; and (26:62 ↔ Joshua 13:14/13:33): H5159 nachălâh, H5414 nâthan, H3808 lôʼ. Common-frequency lexemes — a shared legal motif, no quotation claim.
The total of v. 62 — 23,000 “every male a month old or more” — is set deliberately against the first Levite count of 22,000 in Numbers 3:39, an increase of 1,000. Barnes, JFB, Poole, Ellicott, and Cambridge all read the two figures side by side. The verbal frame is shared: the same counting-verb pāqad, the same age-formula chŏḏeš (“month”) and maʻal (“upward”), the same zâkâr (“male”). Two muster-rolls of one tribe, taken a generation apart, invite the comparison the commentators make.
Numbers 26:62 · Numbers 3:39
basis: Verifier (Numbers 26:62 ↔ Numbers 3:39): shared H6485 pâqad (269 vv), H2145 zâkâr (80 vv), H2320 chôdesh (224 vv), H4605 maʻal (134 vv). Shared census-formula vocabulary — structural parallel between two counts of the same tribe; no quotation.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
This census names the founding family of Israel's priesthood and, in the same breath, records that two of its sons died for bringing “strange fire before the LORD” (v. 61). The roster's own honesty about priestly failure throws into relief the New Testament's claim that Israel always needed a Priest who would not fail — one who, “because he continues forever, has a permanent priesthood” and is “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners” (Hebrews 7:24–26). Aaron's line had to be perpetually re-staffed across this very chapter (Eleazar and Ithamar surviving); the writer to the Hebrews reads the whole Levitical succession, with its deaths and replacements, as the shadow of a better and unending priesthood. Held honestly: the connection is figural — the New Testament does not cite Numbers 26 — but the contrast it draws between a dying, faltering priesthood and the abiding High Priest is the book of Hebrews' explicit argument.
Numbers 26:60 · Numbers 26:61 · Hebrews 7:23–27
Verse 62 grounds the Levites' separate census in a single fact: “no inheritance was given to them.” Numbers 18:20 names what they have instead — “I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel.” The figure of a chosen people whose treasure is not land but God Himself is taken up directly in the Psalter — “The LORD is my chosen portion” (Psalm 16:5), “my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26) — and runs on to Christ, who had “nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20) and who makes His own people “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17), their inheritance “kept in heaven” (1 Peter 1:4) rather than measured in soil. The landless tribe prefigures a people whose portion is the Lord — the inheritance Christ both embodies and gives. Held honestly: the Levite-portion → believer's-portion line is an ancient and widely-held figural reading already drawn within the OT itself (Pss 16, 73); its New-Testament extension to Romans 8:17 and 1 Peter 1:4 is application, not a citation of Numbers 26, and is offered to be weighed against the text.
Numbers 26:62 · Numbers 18:20 · Romans 8:17 · 1 Peter 1:4
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:
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). The Hebrew is the Masoretic tradition; transliterations, parsings, literal renderings, and the “where the English smooths the Hebrew” notes are this tool's own work (⚙) — careful but fallible; check them against BDB/HALOT and a standard grammar.
Two honesty notes specific to this unit. (1) The text is openly imperfect here. Verse 59's clause “whom she bore to Levi” has no expressed subject; Barnes calls the text “probably imperfect,” Poole conjectures “Levi's wife,” and the matter cannot be settled from the Hebrew alone — the synthesis leaves the gap a gap. (2) The genealogy is telescoped. Taking Amram–Jochebed as the literal parents of Moses cannot be reconciled with the ~300 years from Levi without compression of generations; Keil and Ellicott both flag this, and the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved. The five-clan list of v. 58 is itself incomplete (Shimei and Uzziel omitted), as Poole and the Pulpit Commentary note.
The named voices are quoted verbatim from public-domain works (Matthew Henry 1706; Matthew Poole 1685; John Gill 1746–63; Albert Barnes 1834; Keil & Delitzsch, ET 1860s; Geneva Study Bible 1599; Cambridge Bible 1880s; Pulpit Commentary 1880s; Ellicott 1878), attributed in place. Spurgeon's verse-by-verse work is the Psalms (Treasury of David); he wrote no commentary on Numbers, so he is rightly absent here. Cross-reference tiers were computed by the project Verifier on shared Strong's lexemes; the recorded bases are quoted in each thread's badge. Every connection is ⚙ synthesis — generated and to be tested. “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)