Numbers 7:44

Summary

Numbers 7:44 lists one item within the tribal offering inventory: a golden pan or dish, associated with the number ten, and filled with incense. The verse belongs to a repeated formulaic list describing gifts brought by each tribal leader.

Key words

• kaf ("a pan", H3709I) — feminine singular noun in construct state, meaning its literal sense is "the pan of…", here grammatically linking forward to zahav ("gold") despite the numeral inserted between them.
• 'asarah ("ten", H6235) — feminine singular numeral; in the Hebrew text it stands alone without an explicit unit word (no term for "shekels" appears in this string).
• zahav ("gold", H2091) — masculine singular noun, the material specified for the kaf, completing the construct relationship begun by kaf.
• mele'ah ("full", H4392) — feminine singular adjective, agreeing in gender and number with kaf, describing the pan's contents.
• qetoret ("incense", H7004) — feminine singular noun, naming what the pan is full of.

What the text says

The Hebrew clause is built as a construct chain interrupted by a numeral: kaf ("pan," construct) is separated from its expected complement zahav ("gold") by the number 'asarah ("ten"). This is a common Biblical Hebrew pattern for stating an object's material and a quantity of weight together: "a pan — ten — of gold," meaning a golden pan associated with a measure of ten. The Hebrew text itself does not name the unit of that "ten"; no word for "shekel" occurs among the six words given. The final two words, mele'ah ("full") agreeing in feminine singular with kaf, and qetoret ("incense"), state that the pan's content was incense, without any verb — the whole verse consists of a noun phrase with no finite verb, typical of these listing formulas.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew string does not include a word for "shekels"; the numeral 'asarah ("ten") stands unaccompanied by any unit noun. The Vulgate supplies siclos ("shekels") — "decem siclos" — and the Septuagint uses δέκα χρυσῶν ("ten of gold[units]"), both making explicit a unit that the Hebrew leaves implicit. Modern translations (RV1909 "diez siclos," BSB "ten shekels") follow this same interpretive addition, supplying "shekels" as the understood unit of the numeral "ten" that the Hebrew text itself does not name.