What Does Numbers 26:43 Mean in the King James?
All the families of the Shuhamites, according to those that were numbered of them, were threescore and four thousand and four hundred.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The word for those counted also carries the sense of those attended to, so the census reads as notice as well as number.
THE MEANING
You are not only part of a crowd: your place sits within a named family and a counted whole. The verse holds both scales together, so belonging and particularity coexist in the same view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being one among many makes you invisible: here, the whole is counted through its distinct families.
THE ROOT
פְּקֻדֵיהֶם
pequdehem
GROWS FROM
פקד
paqad
To attend to or take account of; by extension, to visit, muster, appoint, or count.
The word translated “numbered” comes from a root that also describes attending to someone. The count holds each family in view as part of the whole, giving number the added sense of notice.
ALSO GROWS
paqad: To attend to, visit, muster, or count.
פָּקַד
In this verse, counting belongs to a wider sense of taking account of a people.
pequddah: Oversight, appointed charge, or visitation.
פְּקֻדָּה
This branch shows how the same root links being counted with being under someone’s care or attention.
THE PATTERN
A whole is held in view through particular attention to its members.
He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.THE THREAD
Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:The Hebrew verb translated “visited” comes from the same root as the word for those counted in Numbers. One verse names attention as visitation; the other gives that attention the form of a count.
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