Numbers 7:29

Summary

The verse lists the animals Eliab son of Helon brought as a peace offering: two oxen, five rams, five goats, and five year-old lambs. The closing formula identifies this entire set as his personal offering (qorban).

Key words

• Ze.vach ("sacrifice of", H2077) — construct noun linking the sacrifice to the following term ha.shelamim, forming "sacrifice of the peace offerings."
• she.la.Mim ("peace offerings", H8002) — masculine plural with definite article, naming the category of offering to which the listed animals belong.
• cha.mi.Shah ("five", H2568) — this numeral appears three times (words 9, 11, 15), each time following the noun it counts (rams, goats, lambs), a normal pattern for cardinal numbers with counted nouns in this list.
• ke.va.Sim be.nei-sha.Nah ("lambs, sons of a year", H3532 + H1121H + H8141) — the phrase "sons of a year" is a construct expression meaning yearling animals, describing the age of the lambs.
• ka.re.Ban ("offering of", H7133A) — masculine singular construct noun that introduces the summary clause, attributing the whole preceding list to a named individual.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a list of quantities and animal types, each numeral placed after its noun (ba.Kar she.na.Yim, "oxen, two"; 'ei.Lim cha.mi.Shah, "rams, five"; etc.), which is the standard Hebrew construction for counting where the item precedes its number. The initial phrase u.le.Ze.vach ha.she.la.Mim ("and for the sacrifice of the peace offerings") governs the entire list that follows, indicating that all these animals belong to this one category of offering. The lambs are further specified as be.nei sha.Nah ("sons of a year"), a construct phrase functioning adjectivally to mark them as one-year-old animals, a nuance that some translations render simply as "a year old" without preserving the "sons of" construction.

The verse closes with a summary clause introduced by the demonstrative zeh ("this") and the construct noun ka.re.Ban ("offering of"), which names Eliab son of Helon as the one who presented everything listed. This closing formula mirrors similar summary statements used for other tribal leaders in the surrounding chapter, each identifying the total offering with a personal name.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) preserves only a fragment corresponding to the yearling lambs (eis eniausias, "for [animals] of a year") and the closing formula ("this is the gift of Eliab son of Chailon"), omitting explicit mention of the oxen, rams, and goats found in the Hebrew list within this particular textual excerpt. The Vulgate and modern translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) follow the fuller Hebrew enumeration, listing all four animal types with their respective quantities.