Numbers 6:15

Summary

Numbers 6:15 lists the items required as part of the Nazirite's offering: a basket of unleavened bread made in three forms (cakes and wafers, both involving oil), plus the accompanying grain offering and drink offerings. The verse is essentially an inventory clause, listing construct-noun chains that specify ingredients and preparation.

Key words

• Sal ("a basket of", H5536) — masculine singular construct, opening the list by naming the container and immediately binding it to what it holds.
• Chalot ("cakes", H2471) — feminine plural, the baked goods that are further qualified by the participle that follows.
• Belulot ("mixed", H1101A) — Qal passive participle, feminine plural, agreeing with chalot; it describes the cakes as having been mixed with oil (a completed action, passive in voice — the cakes did not mix themselves).
• Meshuchim ("smeared", H4886) — Qal passive participle, masculine plural, agreeing with reqiqei ("wafers"); the passive form indicates the wafers were treated with oil by an outside agent, distinct from the mixing verb used for the cakes.
• Minchatam ("their grain offering", H4503G) — feminine singular construct + 3rd person masculine plural suffix, tying the grain offering item grammatically to whatever group ("their") the offering belongs to.

What the text says

The verse is built almost entirely from construct chains (noun + noun in the "X of Y" pattern), which is why the English glosses repeatedly show "of": sal ("basket of") governs matzot ("unleavened breads"), and solet ("fine flour of") governs chalot ("cakes"). This chaining lets Hebrew pack several qualifying nouns into a single noun phrase without extra grammatical words. The two passive participles, belulot and meshuchim, are grammatically distinct even though both refer to oil: belulot (from a root meaning "to mix") is feminine plural to agree with chalot ("cakes"), while meshuchim (from a root meaning "to smear/anoint") is masculine plural to agree with reqiqei ("wafers"). This distinction shows that the Hebrew text treats the oil-application to the cakes and to the wafers as two different actions — mixing into the batter versus smearing on the surface — a nuance not always preserved when both are rendered simply as "with oil" or "made with" in translation.

The final two items, minchatam ("their grain offering") and nischeihem ("their drink offerings"), both carry a 3rd person masculine plural possessive suffix ("their"), grammatically linking these offerings to a group referenced earlier in the wider passage, though the referent itself does not appear within this verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders belulot ("mixed") as ἀναπεποιημένους ("kneaded/worked in") and meshuchim ("smeared") as κεχρισμένα ("anointed"), preserving the two distinct verbs. The Vulgate uses conspersi ("sprinkled/mixed") for belulot and uncta ("anointed") for meshuchim, likewise keeping the distinction. Some modern versions (e.g., BSB, SBLIBRE) reposition the grain offering and libations to the beginning or end of the English sentence, differing from the Hebrew word order where they appear last, but the semantic content matches the Hebrew inventory.