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Numbers26:42–43

The Tribe of Dan

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Numbers 26:42–43 — The Tribe of Dan. 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.

42

These were the descendants of Dan by their clans: The Shuhamite clan from Shuham. These were the clans of Dan.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

’êl·leh ḇə·nê- ḏān lə·miš·pə·ḥō·ṯām haš·šū·ḥā·mî miš·pa·ḥaṯ lə·šū·ḥām ’êl·leh miš·pə·ḥōṯ dān lə·miš·pə·ḥō·ṯām

Word by word11 · parsed
אֵ֤לֶּה’êl·lehThese [were]H428
√ ʼêl-leh — these or thosePronouncommon plural
אֵלֶּה opens the formula — “these.” A pointing-word that frames every tribal entry in the census, fixing the list as a closed, named whole.
בְנֵי־ḇə·nê-the descendantsH1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcNounmasculine plural construct
The construct “sons-of” (בְּנֵי) — built from bēn, “son,” the root that makes Israel a thing of lineage rather than legend. Benson: “Under the name of sons his descendants are included, he having but one immediate son.” The widest sense of the word (grandson, posterity, nation) carries the single son into a tribe.
דָן֙ḏānof DanH1835
√ Dân — Dan, one of the sons of JacobNounpropermasculine singular
דָן — Dan, named by Rachel “God has judged me… and given me a son” (Genesis 30:6), the verb dîn echoing in the name. Jacob’s blessing plays on it again — “Dan shall judge his people” (Genesis 49:16) — yet the next breath calls him “a serpent by the way” (49:17), the very text the Fathers later read against Dan’s slide into idolatry. Here the son of Bilhah is simply entered, faithfully, into the second wilderness census on the plains of Moab.
לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֔םlə·miš·pə·ḥō·ṯāmby their clansH4940
√ mishpâchâh — a family, iPreposition-lNounfeminine plural constructthird person masculine plural
“By-their-clans” — the organizing principle of the whole chapter. The nation is counted not as a mass but as families within a tribe, the covenant kept generation by generation.
הַשּׁוּחָמִ֑יhaš·šū·ḥā·mîThe ShuhamiteH7749
√ Shûwchâmîy — a Shuchamite (collectively)ArticleNounpropermasculine singular
“The Shuhamite” — the lone clan of Dan, a collective gentilic. Keil & Delitzsch: this list “contains only the leading families,” so one name need not mean only one household.
מִשְׁפַּ֖חַתmiš·pa·ḥaṯclanH4940
√ mishpâchâh — a family, iNounfeminine singular construct
mišpaḥaṯ, “clan / family” — the third of five appearances of this root in two verses; the refrain that organizes Israel’s self-understanding as a people of households.
לְשׁוּחָ֕םlə·šū·ḥāmfrom ShuhamH7748
√ Shûwchâm — Shucham, an IsraelitePreposition-lNounpropermasculine singular
“From Shuham” — the eponymous ancestor. Poole and Gill both note he is “called, by transposition, Hushim” in Genesis 46:23; the same man under two spellings, a small textual fingerprint of how names traveled.
אֵ֛לֶּה’êl·lehTheseH428
√ ʼêl-leh — these or thosePronouncommon plural
אֵלֶּה again — “these” — the closing bracket of the entry, matching the opening word and sealing the tribe’s record.
מִשְׁפְּחֹ֥תmiš·pə·ḥōṯwere the clansH4940
√ mishpâchâh — a family, iNounfeminine plural construct
“[were] the clans-of” — the plural mišpəḥōṯ, summing the line. Even a single clan is honored with the full closing formula given to the larger tribes.
דָּ֖ןdānof DanH1835
√ Dân — Dan, one of the sons of JacobNounpropermasculine singular
לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָֽם׃lə·miš·pə·ḥō·ṯāmH4940
√ mishpâchâh — a family, iPreposition-lNounfeminine plural constructthird person masculine plural
לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם closes the verse exactly as v. 42 opened it — “by-their-clans” — an inclusio binding the whole entry. The gloss is left blank in the parse because the BSB folds it into the line above.
43

All of them were Shuhamite clans, and their registration numbered 64,400.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

kāl- haš·šū·ḥā·mî miš·pə·ḥōṯ lip̄·qu·ḏê·hem ’ar·bā·‘āh wə·šiš·šîm ’e·lep̄ wə·’ar·ba‘ mê·’ō·wṯ

Word by word9 · parsed
כָּל־kāl-All [of them]H3605
√ kôl — properly, the wholeNounmasculine singular construct
כָּל־ — “all / the whole.” A construct noun gathering the entire tribe into the single Shuhamite clan that follows.
הַשּׁוּחָמִ֖יhaš·šū·ḥā·mî[were] ShuhamiteH7749
√ Shûwchâmîy — a Shuchamite (collectively)ArticleNounpropermasculine singular
“[were] Shuhamite” — the lone clan-name again, with the article. Poole presses the lesson: “All from one son and family… the increase of families depends singly upon God’s blessing and good pleasure.”
מִשְׁפְּחֹ֥תmiš·pə·ḥōṯclansH4940
√ mishpâchâh — a family, iNounfeminine plural construct
mišpəḥōṯ, “clans” — fifth and final appearance of the family-word across these two verses; the census is, root and branch, a record of households.
לִפְקֻדֵיהֶ֑םlip̄·qu·ḏê·hemand their registration numberedH6485
√ pâqad — to visit (with friendly or hostile intent)Preposition-lVerbQalQalPassParticiplemasculine plural constructthird person masculine plural
לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם — a Qal passive participle of pāqad, “to muster, to attend to, to visit.” The single Hebrew root spans the census-tally here, the LORD’s gracious visiting of Sarah (Genesis 21:1) and of His enslaved people (Genesis 50:24–25; Exodus 3:16), and His visiting of iniquity in judgment (Exodus 20:5). The Greek tradition catches the warmth of it with episkeptomai — Zechariah’s “the Lord… has visited and redeemed His people” (Luke 1:68). So the passive form is freighted: Israel does not merely get counted, it is attended to. The counting is a covenant act, not a bureaucratic one.
אַרְבָּעָ֧ה’ar·bā·‘āh. . . 64,400H702
√ ʼarbaʻ — fourNumbermasculine singular
אַרְבָּעָה, “four” — the first digit of the total, in the masculine form that agrees with the counted men.
וְשִׁשִּׁ֛יםwə·šiš·šîm. . .H8346
√ shishshîym — sixtyConjunctive wawNumbercommon plural
“and-sixty” (šiššîm) — a comparatively rare number-word (it appears in only some 56 verses), which is why the Verifier surfaces it among the shared lexemes linking this count to the parallel census in Numbers 1:39 and the post-exilic musters (Ezra 2:64; Nehemiah 7:66). The shared vocabulary is the census form repeated, not a quotation, so the threads stay structural.
אֶ֖לֶף’e·lep̄. . .H505
√ ʼeleph — hence (the ox's head being the first letter of the alphabet, and this eventually used as a numeral) a thousandNumbermasculine singular
’eleph, “thousand” — the thousands-place; the same triliteral that can denote a clan-unit, here purely numerical.
וְאַרְבַּ֥עwə·’ar·ba‘. . .H702
√ ʼarbaʻ — fourConjunctive wawNumberfeminine singular construct
“and-four” (feminine ’arba‘) — agreeing with mēʼôṯ, “hundreds”; Hebrew gender shifts with the noun counted.
מֵאֽוֹת׃סmê·’ō·wṯ. . .H3967
√ mêʼâh — a hundredNumberfeminine plural
mēʼôṯ, “hundreds” — the final term, closing the additive chain at 64,400. Gill: a tribe of one clan “yet… consisted of 64,400 men; there was an increase of 1700 in this tribe.”

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.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. One son, one clan, a multitude — 26:42

The entry for Dan is the census at its most paradoxical. The header reads “the sons of Dan” — the plural construct בְּנֵי — yet, as Joseph Benson observes, “under the name of sons his descendants are included, he having but one immediate son.” Keil & Delitzsch press the same point with the textual evidence: “The descendants of Dan formed only one family, named from a son of Dan, who is called Shuham here, but Hushim in Genesis 46:23.” The Hebrew itself signals the gap — a single founder (לְשׁוּחָם, Shuham) under one gentilic (הַשּׁוּחָמִי), bracketed front and back by the same word לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם, “by their clans.” Matthew Poole reconciles the spellings frankly: Shuham is “called, by transposition, Hushim,” the very metathesis the manuscript tradition preserves.

ii. The blessing that does the arithmetic — 26:43

Then the count: “four and sixty thousand and four hundreds” — 64,400, all “of one son and family.” Here the bare number turns into theology. Matthew Poole sets the comparison that the chapter invites: “All from one son and family; whereas of Benjamin, who had ten sons… there were only 45,600, to show that the increase of families depends singly upon God’s blessing and good pleasure.” Ten sons yield fewer men than one; fruitfulness is not a function of starting capital. John Gill does the subtraction — Dan “consisted of 64,400 men; there was an increase of 1700 in this tribe.” The governing verb is לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם, from pāqad: not a clerk’s tally but a visitation, God reviewing His own. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, reading the whole chapter, name what the numbers display — “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.”

iii. A name kept in the book — 26:42–43

It is easy to skim a genealogy. Matthew Henry resists the impulse: “We have here the families registered, as well as the tribes. The total was nearly the same as when numbered at mount Sinai.” The point of the second census is continuity — the generation that fell in the wilderness has been replaced, person for person, name for name, by a generation God has carried to the Jordan’s edge. Dan’s single clan, swollen to a host, is the wilderness promise made arithmetic: the people who deserved to vanish were instead numbered, and the very act of numbering is the proof they were kept.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

Reading under Sola Scriptura — fallible, to be tested. A census is the least likely place to look for grace, and that is exactly why it preaches. The chapter spends two whole verses on the smallest tribal entry in the list — one son, one clan — and then records a number larger than that of the tribe with ten sons. Scripture is not embarrassed by the disproportion; it stages it. The implied claim is the one the human voices already heard: that what makes a people is not its breadth of stock but the blessing and good pleasure of God (Poole), and that to be counted by Him (pāqad) is to be kept by Him. Dan will not always be faithful — the same tribe later carries off a stolen idol and a private priesthood (Judges 18) and is conspicuously absent from the sealed tribes of Revelation 7. So the census is no medal; it is a record of mercy received, not merit proved. The honest reading is sober on both sides: God multiplied a man who had every reason to die out, and the man’s heirs still had to choose, generation by generation, whether to keep the covenant they were counted into. Weigh this against the text itself.

To be numbered by God is not the same as being faithful to God — but it is always the same as being kept by Him.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

Dan’s first census — the same clan, a different count structural / thematic — confirmed

The second wilderness census deliberately mirrors the first. In Numbers 1:38–39 Dan is mustered at 62,700; here, on the plains of Moab, the one Shuhamite clan stands at 64,400 — Gill’s noted “increase of 1700.” The verbal overlap is the muster-vocabulary itself: pāqad (to number), ’eleph (thousand), mēʼâh (hundred), šiššîm (sixty), and the tribal name Dân. This is the same accounting form applied to the same tribe a generation apart — a structural parallel, not a quotation.

Numbers 1:38 · Numbers 1:39

basis: Verifier: shared H1835 Dân (63 vv), H4940 mishpâchâh (224 vv) with 1:38; and H6485 pâqad, H505 ʼeleph, H8346 shishshîym, H3967 mêʼâh with 1:39 — the recurring census formula, no rare lexeme or citation, so not ‘verbal.’

The closing refrain of the muster structural / thematic — confirmed

Verse 43 ends with the chapter’s recurring formula — “these are the clans of [N], by their numbering: … so many.” The identical summation seals Issachar (26:25) and the Joseph tribes (26:27): same nouns, same order, same passive participle of pāqad. The repeated frame is what makes Numbers 26 a single liturgical act of counting rather than a scatter of figures.

Numbers 26:25 · Numbers 26:27

basis: Verifier: shared H4940 mishpâchâh, H6485 pâqad, H505 ʼeleph, H8346 shishshîym, H3967 mêʼâh — a fixed census refrain repeated across tribal entries; structural, not a quotation.

Dan’s inheritance, and what Dan did with it structural / thematic — confirmed

The clans counted here become the tribe allotted in Joshua 19:40–48 — and then the cautionary tale of Judges 18:2, where “the clans of Dan” (מִשְׁפְּחֹת דָּן) send spies and seize Laish, carrying off a graven image. The link is the name Dân plus mishpāḥāh (“clan”): the census names the people; Joshua and Judges record their land and their later faithlessness. A thematic thread across the books, carried by the tribal vocabulary — never a verbal quotation.

Joshua 19:40 · Joshua 19:48 · Judges 18:2

basis: Verifier: shared H1835 Dân (63 vv) + H4940 mishpâchâh (224 vv) — and, with Joshua 19:48, H428 ʼêl-leh; a tribe-name thread, not a rare-lexeme or citation link, so structural.

Shuham / Hushim — the founder under two spellings structural / thematic — confirmed

Every commentator here ties v. 42’s Shuham to the Hushim of Genesis 46:23, Dan’s lone son in the roll of those who went down to Egypt. Poole calls it “by transposition,” Keil & Delitzsch and Gill agree. The shared lexeme is only the tribal name Dân (the personal name is spelled differently in each), so the connection rests on the documented metathesis and the genealogical position, not on a verbal match — a structural link the human voices vouch for.

Genesis 46:23

basis: Verifier: only H1835 Dân (63 vv) shared — the names Shuham/Hushim are spelled differently, so this is a genealogical/structural link argued from the commentators’ noted transposition, not a verbal one.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

Counted, kept, and named — the book of the living widely-held

To be numbered by God (pāqad) is, in the wider canon, to be claimed and kept: the same root names the LORD’s gracious visiting of His people (Genesis 50:24; Luke 1:68, epeskepsato). The census that records each clan by name anticipates the register the New Testament calls the Lamb’s book of life (Philippians 4:3; Revelation 21:27) — a people known one by one, kept not by their numbers but by the One who numbers them. The figural reading is widely held: the mustered tribes are a shadow of the redeemed who are named in Christ.

Numbers 26:43 · Luke 1:68 · Philippians 4:3 · Revelation 21:27

The tribe that is counted yet later missing ancient

Dan stands robustly in this muster — 64,400 from one son — yet in Revelation 7:4–8, the sealing of the twelve thousand from every tribe, Dan’s name is conspicuously absent (Manasseh fills the gap). Many of the Fathers (Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.30; Hippolytus) read the omission against Dan’s history of idolatry (Judges 18; Genesis 49:17, the serpent by the way). This is a cross-Testament, figural reading — Greek text against Hebrew, with no shared original-language lexeme — so it must be argued, not asserted, and is offered as ancient typology, not as a verbal link. It sharpens the unit’s sober lesson: being counted here is no guarantee of being sealed there. The number is mercy, never merit; only Christ secures the seal.

Numbers 26:42 · Genesis 49:17 · Revelation 7:4-8

Apparatus & Provenance

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:

  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Joseph Benson, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1810s)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

This unit is two verses of a tribal census (the entry for Dan, Numbers 26:42–43), so the public-domain commentary is necessarily thin and largely repeats across the verses; several sources (Matthew Henry, Barnes, JFB) carry a single chapter-level note on every verse of the page rather than a verse-specific comment, and Barnes’ and Henry’s notes here actually treat the sons of Korah (vv. 9–11) — they are not quoted for v. 42–43 because they do not bear on Dan. JFB’s lemma opens on Simeon (v. 12); it is included only for its general statement about God reducing and increasing the tribes, applied to Dan’s growth, and that scope is flagged in its editorial note. Two voices contain printer’s artifacts preserved verbatim from the source: the Pulpit Commentary’s “alter” (for “after”) and Gill’s “Shulamite” (for “Shuhamite”); both are noted. All cross-references are Hebrew↔Hebrew structural links built on the recurring census vocabulary and the tribal name Dân; none rises to a ‘verbal / quotation’ tier, and the lone cross-Testament reading (Dan’s absence in Revelation 7) shares no original-language lexeme and is therefore offered as ancient typology to be tested, not as a confirmed verbal link.

✦ = 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)