And took all the spoil and all the booty The Hebrew terms for spoil and booty are very close in meaning, referring to goods that have been plundered (see verse 9). So Good News Translation combines them into one expression, saying “loot that they had captured.” However, if synonyms are available in the target language, they should be used here, especially if this serves to highlight the totality and amount of “plunder” (New Living Translation).

Both of man and of beast: See 3.13. As there, man renders a generic Hebrew word for human beings (ʾadam), and beast translates a generic word for domestic animals (behemah; rendered “cattle” in verse 9). Good News Translation renders this phrase as “including the prisoners and the animals,” but this model loses the contrast between the generic Hebrew words here. A better model is “including the people and animals” (TNIV).

Good News Translation makes verses 11-12 one long sentence to conclude the first subsection of chapter 31. In many languages this is a more natural arrangement than that of Revised Standard Version and ESV, which combine verses 10 and 11 as one sentence. On the other hand, verse 11 may be a short summary on its own to conclude the first subsection. If so, a possible model based on Contemporary English Version for this verse is:

• Thus the Israelite soldiers took all the plunder and spoils from the Midianites, including both people and animals.

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .