Numbers 7:57

Summary

The verse lists three animals designated for a burnt offering: one young bull, one ram, and one lamb specified as being in its first year. Each animal is introduced with the cardinal number "one," and the lamb's age is expressed through a construct phrase meaning "son of its year."

Key words

• par ("a young bull", H6499) — masculine singular noun, the first animal named, functioning as the direct object of the offering.
• ben-baqar ("young one of cattle", H1121H + H1241) — construct chain literally "son of cattle," a common Hebrew idiom for a bovine animal, here reinforcing par.
• keves ("a lamb", H3532) — masculine singular noun, the third animal listed.
• ben-shenato ("son of its year", H1121L + H8141 + H9023) — a construct phrase with a possessive suffix ("its"), idiomatically meaning "one year old," modifying the lamb.
• le'olah ("to/for a burnt offering", H9005 + H5930A) — preposition le prefixed to olah, indicating the purpose or destination of the animals just listed.

What the text says

The verse consists of a short list of three sacrificial animals, each followed immediately by the numeral 'echad ("one", H0259), repeated three times — once after par ("bull"), once after 'ayil ("ram"), and once after keves ("lamb"). This repetition of "one" after each noun, rather than a single count applied to a group, gives the Hebrew a rhythmic, itemized quality: each animal is enumerated individually rather than summarized collectively.

The phrase ben-baqar functions as a construct chain clarifying that the par is a bovine, not simply reinforcing "young bull" but tying it grammatically to the category of cattle. Similarly, the lamb's age is not stated with a separate adjective for "yearling" but through another construct chain, ben-shenato, literally "son of its year." This construct-plus-suffix construction is a common Hebrew idiom for expressing age, embedding the animal's age within a possessive relationship rather than using a standalone adjective.

The final word, le'olah, closes the verse by attaching the preposition le- ("to/for") to 'olah ("burnt offering"), signaling that all three preceding animals are designated for this single purpose. The construct and prepositional structures throughout allow the Hebrew to compress grammatical relationships (category, age, purpose) into short noun chains rather than full clauses.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ben-shenato ("son of its year") with the single adjective ἐνιαύσιον ("yearling"), collapsing the Hebrew construct-possessive idiom into one Greek word. The Vulgate's agnum anniculum similarly uses one adjective (anniculum, "year-old") rather than reproducing the "son of its year" construction. The Hebrew ben-baqar ("son of cattle") is rendered in the LXX as ἐκ βοῶν ("from cattle/oxen"), using a prepositional phrase instead of the construct chain, while the Vulgate uses de armento ("from the herd") similarly.