Numbers 28:29

Summary

The verse specifies the grain-offering measure for the daily lamb sacrifices: a tenth (of an ephah) is assigned per lamb, applied individually across the seven lambs offered. The Hebrew achieves this distributive sense through repetition rather than a numeral like "each."

Key words

• 'i.sa.rOn ("a tenth", H6241) — appears twice in immediate sequence; this doubling is the Hebrew mechanism for expressing "a tenth for each one," without using a distinct word for "each."
• la.Keves ("for the... lamb", H3532 + prefix) — the noun Keves takes the preposition le- ("for") fused with the definite article, marking the recipient of the offering.
• ha.'Echad ("the one", H0259) — feminine singular numeral with the article, functioning here to single out one instance among the group (referring back to the lamb).
• shiv.'At ("seven of...", H7651) — construct-state numeral, meaning it cannot stand alone and grammatically binds to the following plural noun to form "seven of the lambs."
• ha.kevaSim ("the lambs", H3532) — plural, definite; completes the construct chain begun by shiv.'At, denoting the full set of seven animals.

What the text says

The Hebrew clause has no verb; it is a nominal sentence listing quantities, typical of the ritual-calendar style in Numbers 28. The core construction is the repeated noun 'i.sa.rOn 'i.sa.rOn ("a tenth, a tenth"), a well-attested Hebrew device for distributive meaning — equivalent to saying "a tenth apiece." This repeated noun is then anchored to la.Keves ha.'Echad ("for the one lamb"), explicitly marking that the tenth-measure applies per single lamb, not as a bulk total.

The second half, le-shiv.'At ha.kevaSim ("for the seven of the lambs"), uses the construct numeral shiv.'At to bind directly to the plural ha.kevaSim, framing the whole group to which the individual (per-lamb) allocation applies. Grammatically, the verse moves from singular distribution (the doubled 'i.sa.rOn + "the one lamb") to the collective total (the seven lambs), making explicit that the same tenth-measure is repeated seven times, once per animal — a nuance that a single non-repeated numeral would not convey as clearly.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) preserves a similar repetitive structure, δέκατον τῳ ἑνὶ, τῷ ἑνὶ τοῖς ἑπτά ("a tenth for the one, for the one, for the seven"), echoing the Hebrew's distributive doubling, though the syntax reorders the elements compared to the Hebrew word order. The Vulgate renders the phrase as "per agnos decimam decimae, qui simul sunt agni septem" ("for the lambs a tenth of a tenth, which together are seven lambs"), a phrasing that reads differently from the Hebrew's simple distributive repetition and introduces the phrase "a tenth of a tenth" (decimam decimae), not present as such in the Hebrew construction.