Numbers 29:2

Summary

Numbers 29:2 instructs the offering of a burnt offering to Yehovah, specified as producing a soothing odor, and lists its exact composition: one young bull, one ram, and seven unblemished yearling lambs.

Key words

• 'a.si.Tem ("you will offer", H6213I) — qal sequential perfect, second person masculine plural; continues a chain of prior instructions, giving the sentence a legal/procedural force ("and you shall do/offer").
• 'o.Lah ("a burnt offering", H5930A) — feminine singular noun naming the sacrifice type, placed immediately after the verb as its direct object.
• Rei.ach ("an odor of", H7381) — masculine singular construct noun; the construct form links it directly to the following word, forming the fixed phrase "odor of soothing."
• ni.Cho.ach ("soothing", H5207) — masculine singular noun completing the construct chain reiach nichoach, describing the quality of the odor.
• te.mi.Mim ("unblemished", H8549G) — masculine plural adjective, agreeing with the lambs (kevasim) and closing the list by specifying their required condition.

What the text says

The verse opens with a narrative vav (va, H9001) attached to a sequential perfect verb, 'a.si.Tem ("you will offer", H6213I), which grammatically continues instructions given earlier in the passage rather than starting a new independent command. The direct object is 'o.Lah ("a burnt offering", H5930A), followed by the construct phrase le-reiach nichoach la-YHWH — literally "to an odor of soothing to Yehovah" — where the construct noun Rei.ach ("odor of", H7381) binds tightly to ni.Cho.ach ("soothing", H5207), producing a technical cultic expression rather than two separate descriptive words.

The remainder of the verse is a list, not a full sentence: each animal is named with its required number, using construct chains to specify type. Par ben-bakar ("a young bull, a young one of cattle") uses the construct ben ("a young one of", H1121H) to specify the bull's category within cattle. Similarly, kevasim benei-shanah ("lambs, sons of a year") uses benei ("sons of", H1121L) construct to indicate the lambs' age class — a construct idiom meaning yearlings, rather than literal "sons." Numbers like 'echad ("one", H0259) and shiv'ah ("seven", H7651) follow the nouns they count, a common word order in this list style. The final adjective temimim ("unblemished", H8549G), plural masculine, grammatically agrees with the closest preceding plural noun, kevasim ("lambs", H3532), though its position at the end may extend descriptively to the whole set of listed animals.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders par ben-bakar ("a young bull, a young one of cattle") as moschon hena ek boōn ("one calf from oxen"), using a prepositional phrase where the Hebrew uses a construct chain. The Vulgate similarly renders it as vitulum de armento unum ("one calf from the herd"), also opting for a prepositional construction rather than reproducing the Hebrew construct relationship directly.