Numbers 28:10

Summary

Numbers 28:10 specifies the burnt offering required on each Sabbath day, stating that it is offered in addition to the daily continual burnt offering and its accompanying drink offering. The verse closes the unit describing the Sabbath sacrificial requirement within the broader chapter on fixed offerings.

Key words

• 'olat ("burnt offering of", H5930A) — feminine singular construct, appearing twice, linking the offering to its occasion (Sabbath) and to the tamid.
• shabbat ("sabbath", H7676) — feminine singular construct, used twice in sequence (once bare, once with suffix) to form a distributive expression.
• beshabbato ("on its sabbath", H7676 + H9023) — the construct noun with a 3rd person masculine singular suffix "its," attached via the preposition be ("on"), producing the sense "on each/every sabbath."
• tamid ("continuity", H8548) — masculine singular noun with the definite article ha (H9009), naming the standing daily offering to which the Sabbath offering is added.
• niskah ("its drink offering", H5262 + H9024) — masculine singular construct noun with a feminine suffix "her/its," the feminine suffix pointing back to the feminine noun 'olat rather than to the masculine tamid.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of construct phrases rather than independent clauses. The opening phrase 'olat shabbat ("burnt offering of sabbath") is immediately followed by beshabbato ("on its sabbath"), repeating the root shabbat with a pronominal suffix. This repetition — noun followed by the same noun with a suffix — is a common Hebrew way of expressing distribution, i.e., referring to each recurring instance of the sabbath rather than a single event.

The second half of the verse uses the preposition 'al ("upon/in addition to", H5921A) to connect the Sabbath offering to 'olat ha-tamid, "the burnt offering of the continuity," meaning the fixed daily offering described earlier in the chapter. The final word, nesekah, carries a feminine suffix "its," which grammatically links back to the feminine 'olat (burnt offering) rather than to the masculine tamid, showing that the drink offering belongs to the Sabbath burnt offering just mentioned, in parallel with the daily offering's own accompanying libation.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders beshabbato as ἐν τοῖς σαββάτοις ("in the sabbaths," plural), where the Hebrew uses a singular construct noun with a suffix. The Vulgate restructures the verse into a subordinate clause ("quae rite funduntur per singula sabbata in holocaustum sempiternum"), merging the distributive sense of beshabbato ("per singula sabbata") with tamid ("sempiternum") without preserving the separate mention of the drink offering (nesekah) as a distinct grammatical unit.