🔢WEB · Numbers 1:42
What does Numbers 1:42 mean?
"Of the children of Naphtali, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war;"
— Numbers 1:42 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Dan, were sixty-two thousand seven hundred.
Of the children of Asher, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war;
those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Asher, were forty-one thousand five hundred.
Of the children of Naphtali, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war;
those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Naphtali, were fifty-three thousand four hundred.
These are those who were counted, whom Moses and Aaron counted, and the princes of Israel, being twelve men: they were each one for his fathers’ house.
So all those who were counted of the children of Israel by their fathers’ houses, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war in Israel;
Explanation
Numbers 1:42 is one line within a longer, repeated formula that Moses used to record the census of each tribe of Israel. In plain language, it simply says that the tribe of Naphtali was counted according to their family lines and ancestral households, and that only men twenty years old and older who were physically able to serve in warfare were included in the number. The verse itself doesn't give the actual total (that comes in verse 43, where the number 53,400 is recorded), but it lays out the criteria used to determine who was counted: age, gender, family lineage, and military fitness.
The context is the early wilderness period, shortly after Israel's exodus from Egypt. God commanded Moses, along with Aaron and a leader from each tribe, to take a census of the whole community "by their families, by their fathers' houses" (Numbers 1:1-3). This was not a general population count but a military muster — a way of organizing the nation into a fighting force capable of taking possession of the land of Canaan. Each tribe, including Naphtali (one of the twelve sons of Jacob through Bilhah, Rachel's servant), was counted using the same standardized method, which is why this same phrasing appears repeatedly throughout the chapter for every tribe.
Theologically, this passage highlights God's orderliness and His concern for the practical, structured life of His covenant people. The census was not merely bureaucratic; it was commanded by
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