Numbers 28:12

Summary

Numbers 28:12 specifies the grain offering (minchah) accompanying two of the animal sacrifices: three tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for the one bull, and two tenths of an ephah of the same mixture for the one ram. The verse establishes a proportional scale of flour according to the animal offered.

Key words

• 'es.ro.Nim ("tenths [of an ephah]", H6241) — masculine plural noun indicating a unit of dry measure; it appears twice, first paired with she.lo.Shah ("three", H7969), then with she.Nei ("two", H8147), setting the quantity of flour for each animal.
• So.let ("fine flour", H5560) — feminine singular noun, the substance being measured; it stands in apposition to the numeral+'esronim phrase, specifying what the tenths consist of.
• min.Chah ("a grain offering", H4503G) — feminine singular noun naming the offering category into which the flour-and-oil mixture falls.
• be.lu.Lah ("mixed", H1101A) — qal passive participle, feminine singular, agreeing with min.Chah; it describes the flour as having been combined with oil, a completed state rather than an ongoing action.
• la.Par / la.'A.yil (H6499 "young bull", H0352A "ram") — each preceded by the preposition-plus-article la ("for the"), marking the animal for which the corresponding grain offering is designated.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel clauses, each following the same syntactic pattern: numeral + 'esronim ("tenths") + solet ("fine flour") + minchah ("a grain offering") + belulah ("mixed") + ba-shemen ("with the oil") + la- + animal + ha-'echad ("the one"). This repetition creates a formulaic structure typical of ritual prescription texts, where quantities are fixed for each type of animal in the sacrificial list. The participle belulah is feminine singular, agreeing grammatically with minchah, and describes the flour-and-oil mixture as already prepared — the text does not detail how the mixing occurs, only that it is a settled condition of the offering as presented.

The construct form she.Nei ("two", H8147) is marked as dual/construct, linking directly to 'esronim, paralleling the simple cardinal she.lo.Shah ("three") in the first clause; both function to quantify the noun that follows. The repeated phrase ha-'echad ("the one," H0259 with article) at the end of each clause specifies that the measure applies per single animal — one bull, one ram — rather than to the group collectively, a distinction the Hebrew marks explicitly through the article and numeral combination that is less emphatic when rendered simply as "each" in translation.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) omits an explicit equivalent for minchah ("a grain offering") as a separate noun, instead folding the sense into the participial phrase σεμιδάλεως ἀναπεποιημένης ("of fine flour, mixed"), without a distinct term matching min.Chah. The Vulgate renders minchah implicitly through "in sacrificio," differing from the LXX's flour-participle-only construction. The Hebrew's repeated ha-'echad ("the one") for each animal is rendered by the Vulgate as "per singulos" ("for each"), and by the BSB as "with each," both conveying distributive sense but not preserving the article-plus-numeral construction found in the Hebrew.