Numbers 7:51

Summary

The verse lists three animals designated for a burnt offering: one young bull, one ram, and one lamb specified as being one year old. It is part of a repeated inventory of tribal offerings in Numbers 7.

Key words

• par ("a young bull", H6499) — masculine singular noun, the first animal named, functioning as the direct object of the offering list.
• 'echad ("one", H0259) — cardinal number repeated three times (after par, 'ayil, and keves), each time confirming the singular count of each animal type.
• ben-bakar ("son of cattle", H1121H/H1241) — construct chain meaning "a young one of cattle," a common Hebrew idiom to specify a bovine of a particular class rather than simply "bull."
• ben-shenato ("son of its year", H1121L/H8141/H9023) — construct chain with pronominal suffix, literally "son of his year," the standard Hebrew idiom for an animal one year old.
• le-'olah ("for a burnt offering", H9005/H5930A) — preposition le ("to/for") attached to 'olah, indicating the purpose or destination of all three animals listed.

What the text says

The verse is structured as a simple list of three sacrificial animals, each introduced by its name followed by the number 'echad ("one", H0259). This repetition of 'echad after each animal — rather than a single count applied to all three — emphasizes that each species is counted individually as a single unit, a common stylistic feature in these census-like tribal offering lists in Numbers 7.

Two construct chains appear in the verse. The first, ben-bakar ("son of cattle"), functions idiomatically to describe the bull's youth or category within the cattle class, rather than being a separate animal from par. The second, ben-shenato ("son of its year"), attached to the lamb (keves, H3532), specifies the animal's age as one year using the Hebrew idiom "son of X" to denote age, with the pronominal suffix -o ("its", H9023) referring back to the lamb.

The final phrase, le-'olah ("for a burnt offering"), governs the entire list: the preposition le indicates that all three animals — the bull, the ram, and the year-old lamb — are together designated for this single offering category.