In the ancient Hebrew version of the segmentary system, the top level involved the inclusion of all Jews into a single descent group attributing its origin to Jacob. His descendants constituted the Israelites, literally descendants of Israel, a second name that Jacob received in a prophetic revelation. The tribes were in turn subdivided into smaller segments according to the number of sons attributed to each tribal ancestor. The Hebrew text calls groupings on this level mitzpuchim , families or clans in various biblical translations, which can be understood as major lineage segments in formal anthropological terms. The division of tribes into major segments is uniformly recounted in a number of Old Testament passages, and these units are given further elaboration in the history of the conquest and settlement of Canaan and the rise and fall of the Hebrew kingdoms.
Further subdivision is applied in the next generation to define eight intermediate segments.
The next cohort, that of Moses, Aaron and Korah, is marked by an anomalous lineal structure. The descendants of Aaron and of Korah are established as unique branches with no counterbalancing segments descended from their brothers or other agnates in their generation. These instances constitute restricted lines of succession that are not usually associated with segmentary systems and reflect hierarchical patterns that will be discussed in a subsequent section. Indications of the structure of the full system are recounted in Numbers and Joshua. A later passage, Joshua 7, provides a condensed version of the top to bottom scope of the lineage system.