Numbers 7:68

Summary

The verse describes a single golden ceremonial dish weighing ten (shekels), filled with incense — part of the itemized list of gifts offered by a tribal leader in Numbers 7. The Hebrew is compact, omitting the word "shekel," which is only implied.

Key words

• kaf ("a pan", H3709I) — feminine singular construct noun; opens the phrase as the item being counted, syntactically expecting a following genitive relation (as in "pan of X").
• 'achat ("one", H0259) — feminine singular cardinal number, agreeing with kaf in gender; specifies the quantity of pans, not their content.
• 'asarah ("ten", H6235) — grammatically tagged here as a noun, though numeric in meaning; stands without an explicit noun for "shekel," so the unit of weight must be supplied from context.
• zahav ("gold", H2091) — masculine singular noun, identifying the material of the pan and, by proximity, the implied "ten [shekels] of gold."
• melu'ah ("full", H4392) — feminine singular adjective agreeing with kaf, describing the pan's filled state.
• qetoret ("incense", H7004) — feminine singular noun, naming the substance filling the pan.

What the text says

The Hebrew clause consists of a chain of nouns and one adjective with no verb, typical of inventory-style lists in this chapter of Numbers. Kaf 'achat ("one pan") is followed by 'asarah zahav ("ten, gold"), a sequence that in Hebrew idiom for weights typically means "ten [shekels] of gold," even though the word for "shekel" (which would normally appear, as in verse 7:70 elsewhere in the chapter's parallel entries) is not written here. The gender agreement between kaf (feminine) and both 'achat (feminine) and melu'ah (feminine) confirms that "one" and "full" both modify "pan," while zahav functions as a material description and qetoret as the direct content named at the end of the clause.

The elliptical omission of "shekel" is a feature of the Hebrew text itself, not an error — the noun is understood from the recurring pattern of similar entries throughout Numbers 7, where explicit weight units appear in some verses and are implied in others through the same number + zahav pattern.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) makes the implied weight unit explicit, adding siclos ("shekels") — "decem siclos" ("ten shekels") — which is not a separate word in the Hebrew line itself. The LXX (LXXSWETE) similarly reads δέκα χρυσῶν ("ten of gold"), preserving the same ellipsis found in the Hebrew rather than supplying "shekel." Modern versions (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) all insert "shekels" explicitly to render the sense, following the Vulgate's interpretive addition rather than the Hebrew's bare numeral construction.