What Does Numbers 26:23 Mean?

Of the sons of Issachar after their families. Of Tola, the family of the Tolaites. Of Phuva, the family of the Punites.

Numbers 26:23 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Of the sons of Issachar after their families: of Tola, the family of the Tolaites: of Pua, the family of the Punites:

THE KEY

Issachar’s name does not stop at one ancestor; it is carried forward into distinct, named family lines.

THE MEANING

The verse keeps Issachar’s descendants in view through their households, preserving Tola and Pua as names within the lineage. It presents continuity as something specific: a shared origin carried through distinct family names.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that those who come after a person become an anonymous mass: the verse preserves the names of the families within the line.

THE ROOT

יִשָּׂשכָר

Yissachar

GROWS FROM

שכר

Hire, wages, or recompense.

Genesis 30:18 ties Issachar’s name to ⁨שָׂכָר⁩ (sakar), meaning hire or recompense. Here that name continues from one ancestor into named family lines, keeping the origin and its households in view together.

ALSO GROWS

sakar: Wages, hire, or reward.

שָׂכָר

Genesis connects this word to Issachar’s name, so the census carries that meaning into the family line.

sakhar: To hire or receive as hire.

שָׂכַר

This verbal branch shows the same root in action: the name holds the language of hiring and recompense.

THE PATTERN

A lineage remains legible when names are carried into households and descendants.

And the sons of Issachar, Tola, and Phuvah, and Job, and Shimron.

Genesis 46:13 · SDVThe verse names Issachar’s sons, whose family lines this census continues to identify.

Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob.

Exodus 1:1 · SDVThe verse preserves names alongside households, as this census does for Issachar’s families.

Abraham brought forth Isaac, and Isaac brought forth Jacob, and Jacob brought forth Judah and his brothers.

Matthew 1:2 · SDVThe genealogy carries names from one generation into the next, keeping the line visible.

THE THREAD

And Leah said, God has given me my wages, because I have given my maidservant to my husband. And she called his name Issachar, wages.

Genesis 30:18 · SDV

The name in this census carries the language of ⁨שָׂכָר⁩ (sakar, hire or recompense): Genesis ties Issachar to Leah’s “hire.” Numbers then shows that name continuing as an ancestry with families of its own.

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