Numbers 7:8

Summary

Numbers 7:8 records that four carts and eight oxen were given to the descendants of Merari, in proportion to their assigned service, under the authority of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest. This verse continues an itemized account of the wagons and animals distributed among the Levitical clans for transporting the tabernacle.

Key words

• natan ("he gave", H5414G) — qal perfect, third person masculine singular, indicating a completed action; the subject (unnamed here) is the one who distributed the carts and oxen.
• benei ("[the] descendants of", H1121A) — construct plural of "son," linking directly to Merari (H4847), marking the recipients as the clan-group descended from Merari.
• ke-fi ("according to the mouth of", H6310K) — preposition ke ("according to", H9004) plus construct pi ("mouth of", H6310K), an idiom meaning "according to" or "in proportion to," here governing avodatam ("their service", H5656H).
• avodatam ("their service", H5656H) — feminine singular construct noun with third person masculine plural suffix -m ("their", H9028), specifying the particular labor or task assigned to the sons of Merari.
• be-yad ("in [the] hand of", H9003 + H3027H) — preposition be plus construct yad, an idiom expressing oversight or authority, here attributing supervision to Ithamar.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure places the objects first — arba ha-agalot ("four of the carts", H0702/H5699) and shemonat ha-baqar ("eight of the oxen", H8083/H1241) — each marked by the direct object marker 'et (H0853), before the verb natan ("he gave", H5414G) appears. This front-loading of objects is typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative syntax when itemizing distributed goods, and it mirrors the pattern of the preceding verses in this chapter's list of tribal offerings.

The phrase ke-fi avodatam ("according to the mouth of their service") uses the idiom "mouth of" (pi, H6310K) to mean "in proportion to" or "as required by," a construction that ties the quantity of carts and oxen directly to the specific labor-load of the Merari clan, distinct from what other Levitical divisions received elsewhere in the chapter. The closing phrase be-yad Itamar ben-Aharon ha-kohen ("in the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest") uses the idiom "hand of" (yad, H3027H) to denote administrative oversight, identifying Ithamar as the one under whose direction this distribution occurred.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders be-yad ("in the hand of", H3027H) with the Greek preposition διὰ ("through" or "by means of"), which conveys agency similarly to the Hebrew idiom but without the literal body-part image. The Vulgate's sub manu ("under the hand") preserves the Hebrew idiom more literally than the LXX. The Vulgate also adds alia ("other/additional") before "carts," a word not present in the Hebrew text, which some English versions (e.g., BSB) reflect only implicitly through context rather than an explicit lexical equivalent.