Numbers 7:15

Summary

The verse lists three animals designated as a burnt offering: a young bull, a ram, and a one-year-old lamb. It belongs to a repeated formula describing the offerings brought by the tribal leaders in Numbers 7.

Key words

par ("a young bull", H6499) — masculine singular noun, the first animal named, in construct with ben-baqar specifying it as a bovine.

ben ("a young one of", H1121H) — construct form meaning "son of," here used idiomatically with baqar ("cattle", H1241) to specify the type of bull (literally "a bull, a son of cattle").

'echad ("one", H0259) — cardinal number repeated three times (words 2, 6, 8), each time following its animal noun to mark it individually as a single specimen.

ben-shenato ("son of its year", H1121L + H8141 + H9023) — a construct chain with pronominal suffix, the standard idiom for "one year old," applied to the lamb.

le'olah ("to/for a burnt offering", H9005 + H5930A) — preposition le- prefixed to 'olah, indicating the purpose or destination of all three animals just listed.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is a simple list without a main verb, consisting of three animal designations followed by a single purpose clause. Each animal is introduced by its noun and immediately qualified by the number 'echad ("one", H0259), a pattern that occurs three times in sequence: par 'echad ("one young bull"), 'ayil 'echad ("one ram"), keves 'echad ("one lamb"). This repetition of 'echad after each noun, rather than a single count applied to the whole list, gives the Hebrew a distributive, itemized quality — each animal is counted separately even though the total is obviously three.

The bull's classification uses the construct phrase ben-baqar ("a young one of cattle"), where ben (H1121H) does not mean a literal offspring relationship but functions as a classifier, similar to its use in ben-shenato ("son of its year," H1121L) applied to the lamb, which is the standard Hebrew idiom for indicating age — literally "son of its year" meaning "a yearling." The final phrase le'olah ("for a burnt offering", H5930A) uses the preposition le- (H9005) to mark purpose, governing all three animals listed before it as their collective destination or use.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ben-baqar as ἐκ βοῶν ("from among cattle"), a prepositional phrase rather than the Hebrew's construct-idiom "son of cattle," though the sense of classification is preserved. The Vulgate's bovem de armento ("an ox from the herd") similarly uses a prepositional construction (de armento) instead of the Hebrew's construct chain. For the lamb's age, the LXX uses the adjective ἐνιαύσιον ("yearling") and the Vulgate anniculum ("year-old"), both single adjectives that condense the Hebrew's construct phrase ben-shenato ("son of its year") into one word, losing the "son of" idiom visible in the Hebrew.