Numbers 29:15

Summary

The verse specifies the grain offering measure required for each lamb in a group of fourteen: one tenth (of an ephah) per lamb. It closes a list of offerings by fixing the proportional amount attached to each animal individually.

Key words

• 'issaron ("a tenth", H6241) — appears twice in succession (words 2 and 3), a distributive repetition meaning "a tenth for each," indicating the fixed measure applies individually rather than as a single collective amount.
• keves ("lamb", H3532) — first occurrence (word 5) is singular with the definite article ha- ("the", H9009) plus 'echad ("one", H259), marking one lamb as the unit of distribution.
• 'echad ("one", H259) — cardinal number modifying keves, reinforcing the singular/distributive sense: "for the one lamb," i.e., for each single lamb.
• 'arba'ah 'asar ("fourteen", H702 + H6240) — compound cardinal number in construct form, governing kevasim ("lambs", H3532) to specify the total count of the group to which the individual measure applies.
• kevasim ("lambs", H3532) — plural form of the same noun used earlier in singular, closing the verse by naming the full group (fourteen) after having established the per-unit rate.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around a distributive construction: the doubling of 'issaron ("a tenth", H6241) — ve-'issaron 'issaron — functions grammatically to express "a tenth each," a common Hebrew idiom for distribution without needing a separate word for "each." This doubled noun phrase is then anchored to the singular la-keves ha-'echad ("for the one lamb," H3532 + H259), which specifies that the tenth applies per single lamb, not as an aggregate.

The final clause, le-'arba'ah 'asar kevasim ("for fourteen lambs," H702 + H6240 + H3532), shifts to plural and states the total number of lambs governed by this per-unit rate. The construct relationship between the number and kevasim ties the whole group back to the singular unit established earlier, so the verse's structure moves from the distributive unit (one lamb, one tenth) to the collective total (fourteen lambs).

Differences between versions

The LXX (δέκατον δέκατον, "a tenth, a tenth") mirrors the Hebrew's doubled noun structure directly. The Vulgate renders it as decimam decimae ("a tenth of a tenth"), which reads differently from the distributive doubling in the Hebrew and LXX — it suggests a fractional relationship rather than a repeated distributive unit. Modern versions like BSB add "of an ephah," a measurement unit not explicitly present in the Hebrew word 'issaron itself, which simply means "a tenth" without specifying the referent unit.