Numbers 29:32

Summary

The verse specifies the animal offerings for the seventh day of the festival: seven young bulls, two rams, and fourteen unblemished yearling lambs. It continues the sequential list of daily sacrifices found in this chapter of Numbers.

Key words

• pa.Rim ("young bulls", H6499) — masculine plural noun, the first category of offering, numbered by shiv.'Ah ("seven", H7651).
• 'ei.Lim ("rams", H0352A) — masculine plural noun, paired with she.Na.yim ("two", H8147), a dual-form cardinal number marking exactly two units.
• ke.va.Sim ("lambs", H3532) — masculine plural noun, further specified by the construct phrase that follows.
• be.nei- ("sons of", H1121L) — masculine plural construct noun, linking "lambs" to "a year" to express age (i.e., yearling lambs).
• te.mi.Mim ("unblemished", H8549G) — masculine plural adjective, agreeing with and qualifying all fourteen lambs (and implicitly the other animals) as physically without defect.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is elliptical, lacking an explicit verb of offering; it simply lists the day (ba.yom ha.she.vi.'i, "on the seventh day") followed by three animal categories, each paired with its numeral: pa.Rim seven, 'ei.Lim two, ke.va.Sim fourteen. This paratactic listing style is typical of the sacrificial calendars in Numbers 28–29, where the verb of presenting offerings is understood from context established earlier in the chapter rather than restated for each day.

The phrase ke.va.Sim be.nei-sha.Nah ("lambs, sons of a year") uses the construct noun be.nei ("sons of", H1121L) idiomatically to indicate age — the lambs are one year old, not that they are literally "sons" of a year. The numeral for the lambs, 'ar.ba.'Ah 'a.Sar ("four-teen", H0702 + H6240), is split across two words in the Hebrew, a common construction for numbers between eleven and nineteen. Finally, te.mi.Mim ("unblemished", H8549G), a plural adjective, closes the verse and grammatically can apply to the animals mentioned, describing their physical soundness as required for the offerings.

Differences between versions

The LXX (SWETE) omits the adjective corresponding to te.mi.Mim ("unblemished") for the bulls and rams, applying no explicit unblemished qualifier to the whole set as the Hebrew's trailing adjective does; it also renders ke.va.Sim be.nei-sha.Nah as "ἀμνοὺς ἐνιαυσίους" ("yearling lambs"), a single compound-like phrase rather than the Hebrew's construct chain. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) explicitly adds "immaculatos" ("unblemished") only to the lambs (agnos anniculos immaculatos), whereas the Hebrew's te.mi.Mim stands at the end of the verse without being morphologically restricted to lambs alone.