Numbers 29:20

Summary

Numbers 29:20 specifies the animal offerings prescribed for the third day of a festival period: eleven young bulls, two rams, and fourteen yearling lambs, all required to be without blemish. The verse follows a fixed liturgical pattern listing sacrificial animals and their quantities for each day.

Key words

• pa.Rim ("young bulls", H6499) — masculine plural noun, the first category of animal offered, quantified by the following number.
• 'ash.tei- 'a.Sar ("one-ten", H6249 + H6240) — compound cardinal construction meaning "eleven"; Biblical Hebrew often builds teen-numbers by joining a unit with 'a.Sar ("-teen").
• be.nei- sha.Nah ("sons of a year", H1121L + H8141) — construct phrase functioning as an idiom for "yearling," describing the age-class of the lambs rather than literal offspring.
• 'ar.ba.'Ah 'a.Sar ("four-teen", H0702 + H6240) — same teen-construction pattern as 'ash.tei- 'a.Sar, here yielding "fourteen."
• te.mi.Mim ("unblemished", H8549G) — masculine plural adjective agreeing with the nearest preceding plural noun (ke.va.Sim, "lambs"), though it is generally understood in the sacrificial lists to describe the physical soundness required of the animals offered.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence has no verb; it is a list construction typical of this chapter's ritual calendar, where the day is named (u.vai.Yom ha.she.li.Shi, "and on the third day") and then the required animals are simply enumerated in sequence: bulls with their number, rams with their number, lambs with their number and age-qualifier, and finally the shared qualifier "unblemished." The verb of offering, present in the surrounding context of the chapter, is not repeated in this verse — the list functions elliptically, depending on the sacrificial verb used earlier in the passage.

The numbers "eleven" and "fourteen" are expressed through Hebrew's teen-number pattern, joining a unit numeral with 'a.Sar ("-teen"), a construction distinct from the simpler cardinal "two" (she.Na.yim, H8147) used for the rams, which appears as a plain dual-form numeral rather than a compound.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the teen-numbers as abbreviated numerals (ία for eleven, ιδ' for fourteen) rather than spelling them out, and uses ἐνιαυσίους ("yearling") as a single adjective for the lambs, corresponding to the Hebrew idiom be.nei- sha.Nah ("sons of a year"). The Vulgate similarly renders this idiom as "anniculos" ("yearling"), collapsing the construct phrase into one Latin adjective. Both LXX and Vulgate place ἀμώμούς/immaculatos ("unblemished") at the end, matching the Hebrew te.mi.Mim's position after all three animal categories are listed.