Numbers 29:10

Summary

Numbers 29:10 specifies the grain-offering measure that accompanies the lambs of the festival sacrifice: a tenth-measure of flour for each lamb, applied distributively across the seven lambs mentioned in the surrounding ritual instructions.

Key words

• 'issaron ("a tenth", H6241) — appears twice in immediate repetition, a Hebrew stylistic device that expresses distribution ("a tenth for each one") without a separate distributive particle.
• keves ("lamb", H3532) — masculine singular, marked with the article via the prefixed preposition la- ("for the"), identifying the single animal receiving one 'issaron.
• ha-'echad ("the one", H0259) — cardinal number with article, used substantively to mean "the single (lamb)"; the data marks its grammatical gender as feminine, which stands in tension with the masculine noun keves it qualifies.
• shiv'at ("seven of", H7651) — construct-state cardinal, grammatically bound to the following plural noun, meaning "[the] seven of" rather than a free-standing number.
• ha-kevasim ("the lambs", H3532) — masculine plural with article, the absolute noun completing the construct chain begun by shiv'at.

What the text says

The verse is built from two paired phrases rather than a single flowing sentence. The first phrase, 'issaron 'issaron ("a tenth, a tenth"), doubles the noun for a tenth-measure; in Biblical Hebrew this repetition functions distributively, meaning "a tenth-measure for each," rather than indicating two separate tenths added together. This doubled measure is then anchored to la-keves ha-'echad, literally "for the lamb, the one," where the article-bearing cardinal ha-'echad specifies a single individual animal as the unit of distribution.

The second phrase, le-shiv'at ha-kevasim, uses the construct form shiv'at ("seven of") bound to ha-kevasim ("the lambs"), producing "for the seven of the lambs." Grammatically this construct chain ties the total count of seven lambs back to the singular unit established in the first phrase, so the sentence as a whole reads as: a tenth-measure per lamb, applied across seven lambs.

Differences between versions

The LXX mirrors the Hebrew's distributive doubling with δέκατον δέκατον ("a tenth, a tenth"), preserving the same repetition pattern. The Vulgate instead renders decimam decimae ("a tenth of a tenth"), a genitive-style construction that does not reproduce the simple repetition found in the Hebrew and Greek, producing a phrasing that reads differently from the distributive sense of 'issaron 'issaron. Modern translations (RV1909, SBLIBRE, BSB) resolve the construction by stating plainly "a tenth for each of the seven lambs," collapsing the Hebrew's repeated-noun idiom into an explicit distributive phrase.