Numbers 28:21

Summary

Numbers 28:21 specifies the grain offering accompanying each lamb in a sacrificial series: a tenth-measure (of flour, implied from context) is required for every one of the seven lambs. The verse uses a distributive construction to make clear the offering applies individually to each animal, not collectively.

Key words

• issaron ("a tenth", H6241) — repeated twice in immediate succession (word 1 and word 2), a grammatical technique in Biblical Hebrew expressing distribution: "a tenth, a tenth" conveys "a tenth for each one."
• ta'aseh ("you will offer/you will do", H6213I) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular; the imperfect aspect marks an action to be carried out, here functioning as a prescriptive instruction rather than a simple future statement.
• kkeves ha'echad ("the one lamb", H3532 + H0259) — the numeral 'echad ("one", H0259) with the definite article on keves isolates a single lamb as the unit to which the offering applies.
• shiv'at hakkevasim ("the seven of the lambs", H7651 + H3532) — shiv'at stands in construct state, meaning it grammatically links to "the lambs" as "seven-of-the-lambs," setting the total count against which the distributive tenth is measured.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence places the doubled noun issaron issaron ("a tenth, a tenth") at the very start, before the verb ta'aseh ("you will offer") appears. This word-order — object first, verb second — combined with the reduplication, front-loads the distributive sense: the text signals immediately that the amount is repeated per unit, not a single total sum. The verb ta'aseh is second-person masculine singular, addressing an unspecified singular "you" (likely continuing instructions to Moses or the officiant from the wider chapter), and its imperfect form functions here as a legal/ritual directive.

The prepositional phrases lakkeves ha'echad ("for the one lamb") and leshiv'at hakkevasim ("for the seven of the lambs") work together to state the ratio explicitly: one tenth-measure corresponds to one lamb, and this ratio is then multiplied across the full count of seven. The construct form shiv'at ("seven of") grammatically binds the number to "the lambs," reinforcing that the seven lambs are being treated as the reference set for the per-unit calculation established by the doubled issaron.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew doubled form issaron issaron is rendered in the LXX as δέκατον δέκατον ("tenth, tenth"), preserving the distributive repetition. The Vulgate uses decimam decimæ ("a tenth of a tenth"), a phrasing that reads as a fraction-of-a-fraction rather than a distributive "each," diverging from both the Hebrew reduplication and the LXX's parallel repetition. Modern versions such as BSB and SBLIBRE resolve the distributive sense explicitly with phrases like "a tenth... with each of the seven lambs," making explicit what the Hebrew repetition implies through word order alone.