Verse 32
32. All the cities are twenty and nine This does not agree with the names detailed in the text, which are thirty-six at least. To remove this discrepancy the Rabbins assume that the cities given to Simeon are not counted. But there were twelve or fifteen given to that tribe. Others suggest that several of these places were mere hamlets, and were not counted; or that compound names have been separated, or epithets prefixed been made into names; still others, that one place may have had several names, or that there is an error in the numerical letters for twenty-nine. The Syriac reads thirty-six, an evident change in that version to meet the difficulty. It is more probable that several names were added by a later hand after the country was more thickly peopled, possibly to gratify local pride, and the number twenty-nine was not changed.
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