Numbers 7:81

Summary

This verse lists the animals offered by one tribal leader as part of the dedication offerings for the altar: a young bull, a ram, and a one-year-old lamb, all designated as a burnt offering.

Key words

• par ("a young bull", H6499) — masculine singular noun, the first sacrificial animal named.
• ben-baqar ("son of cattle", H1121/H1241) — construct chain literally "son of herd/cattle," an idiomatic way of specifying a young bovine, appositional to par.
• 'ayil ("a ram", H0352A) — masculine singular noun, the second animal in the list.
• ben-shenato ("son of his year", H1121/H8141 + suffix H9023) — construct chain with a pronominal suffix meaning "its year," the standard Hebrew idiom for expressing an animal's age as one year old.
• le'olah ("to/for a burnt offering", H9005 + H5930A) — preposition plus noun, stating the purpose or category of the sacrifice for the entire list.

What the text says

The verse is a simple asyndetic list (no conjunctions joining the items in the Hebrew), naming three animals in sequence: par 'echad ("one young bull"), 'ayil 'echad ("one ram"), and kebes 'echad ("one lamb"). Each animal is followed by the numeral 'echad ("one", H0259), functioning as a post-positive quantifier rather than a preceding adjective, a common pattern in Hebrew enumeration lists such as this one in Numbers 7.

The bull's youth is reinforced by the construct phrase ben-baqar, literally "son of cattle/herd," which functions as an idiom specifying a young bovine rather than a mature one. Similarly, the lamb's age is expressed through the construct chain ben-shenato, literally "son of its year," using the pronominal suffix -o ("its/his") to indicate that the lamb has completed one year. This idiomatic construction — expressing age through kinship terminology ("son of") — is a feature of Biblical Hebrew that does not translate directly into English or Greek without paraphrase. The final phrase, le'olah, uses the preposition le- ("to/for") attached to 'olah ("burnt offering"), indicating the purpose of all three animals just listed.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ben-baqar as ek boōn ("from oxen/cattle"), using a prepositional phrase instead of the Hebrew construct chain. For ben-shenato ("son of its year"), the LXX uses the single adjective eniausion ("yearling"), collapsing the Hebrew idiom into one word. The Vulgate follows a similar pattern, translating ben-baqar as de armento ("from the herd") and ben-shenato as the adjective anniculum ("year-old"), likewise converting the Hebrew kinship-based idiom into a standard adjectival form.