Numbers 28: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Moses to give Israel a schedule of offerings and the exact amounts that go with each one. It starts with the two lambs offered every morning and evening, then adds the extra offerings for the Sabbath and for the first day of each month. It then covers Passover and the seven days of unleavened bread, and the day of firstfruits at the end of the seven weeks. Each set of festival offerings is listed as an addition to the regular daily burnt offering, not a replacement for it.

Claim by Claim

1. 28:1
   • The LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD told Moses to say something.
2. 28:2
   • The LORD told Moses to command the children of Israel.
   • The LORD told Moses to say to them what follows.
   • The LORD calls the sacrifices his offering.
   • The LORD calls the offering his bread for his offerings made by fire.
   • The offerings made by fire are a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
   • The Israelites are to take care to offer these to the LORD at their appointed time.
3. 28:3
   • Moses is to tell them this is the offering made by fire they are to offer to the LORD.
   • Two lambs in their first year are to be offered.
   • The lambs are to be without blemish.
   • Two lambs are to be offered each day.
   • This is a continual burnt offering.
4. 28:4
   • One lamb is to be offered in the morning.
   • The second lamb is to be offered at twilight.
5. 28:5
   • A tenth of an ephah of fine flour is to accompany it as a grain offering.
   • The flour is to be mixed with oil.
   • The oil is beaten oil.
   • The quantity of oil is a fourth of a hin.
6. 28:6
   • It is a continual burnt offering.
   • This burnt offering was instituted at Mount Sinai.
   • It is for a pleasing aroma.
   • It is an offering made by fire to the LORD.
7. 28:7
   • The drink offering for each lamb is a fourth of a hin.
   • The drink offering is to be poured out in the holy place.
   • The drink poured out is strong drink.
   • The drink offering is poured to the LORD.
8. 28:8
   • The second lamb is to be offered at twilight.
   • It is to be offered with the same grain offering as in the morning.
   • It is to be offered with the same drink offering as in the morning.
   • It is an offering made by fire.
   • It is a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
9. 28:9
   • On the sabbath day two lambs in their first year are to be offered.
   • The sabbath lambs are to be without blemish.
   • Two tenth measures of fine flour are to be offered as a grain offering.
   • The flour is to be mixed with oil.
   • A drink offering accompanies it.
10. 28:10
    • This is the burnt offering of every sabbath.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering.
    • It is in addition to the drink offering of the continual burnt offering.
11. 28:11
    • At the beginnings of the months the Israelites are to offer a burnt offering to the LORD.
    • The monthly burnt offering includes two young bulls.
    • It includes one ram.
    • It includes seven lambs in their first year.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
12. 28:12
    • Three tenth measures of fine flour mixed with oil are to be offered as a grain offering for each bull.
    • Two tenth measures of fine flour mixed with oil are to be offered as a grain offering for the ram.
13. 28:13
    • A separate tenth measure of fine flour mixed with oil is to be offered as a grain offering for each lamb.
    • This is a burnt offering.
    • It is a pleasing aroma.
    • It is an offering made by fire to the LORD.
14. 28:14
    • The drink offering for a bull is half a hin of wine.
    • The drink offering for a ram is a third of a hin.
    • The drink offering for a lamb is a fourth of a hin.
    • The drink offerings are of wine.
    • This is the burnt offering for each month throughout the months of the year.
15. 28:15
    • One male goat is to be offered as a sin offering to the LORD.
    • The goat is offered in addition to the continual burnt offering.
    • It is offered in addition to the drink offering of the continual burnt offering.
16. 28:16
    • The fourteenth day of the first month is the LORD's passover.
17. 28:17
    • The fifteenth day of that month is a feast.
    • Unleavened bread is to be eaten for seven days.
18. 28:18
    • The first day is a holy convocation.
    • No laborious work is to be done on that day.
19. 28:19
    • An offering made by fire is to be presented as a burnt offering to the LORD.
    • It includes two young bulls.
    • It includes one ram.
    • It includes seven lambs in their first year.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
20. 28:20
    • Their grain offering is to be of fine flour mixed with oil.
    • Three tenth measures are to be offered for a bull.
    • Two tenth measures are to be offered for the ram.
21. 28:21
    • A separate tenth measure is to be offered for each lamb.
    • This applies to all seven lambs.
22. 28:22
    • One goat is to be offered as a sin offering.
    • The sin offering is to make atonement for them.
23. 28:23
    • These are to be offered in addition to the morning burnt offering.
    • The morning burnt offering is the continual burnt offering.
24. 28:24
    • Offerings of this kind are to be made each day for seven days.
    • It is the food of the offering made by fire.
    • It is a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
    • It is to be offered in addition to the continual burnt offering.
    • It is to be offered in addition to the drink offering of the continual burnt offering.
25. 28:25
    • On the seventh day there is to be a holy convocation.
    • No laborious work is to be done on that day.
26. 28:26
    • On the day of firstfruits the Israelites bring a new grain offering to the LORD.
    • This occurs at their Feast of Weeks.
    • On that day there is to be a holy convocation.
    • No laborious work is to be done on that day.
27. 28:27
    • A burnt offering is to be offered for a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
    • It includes two young bulls.
    • It includes one ram.
    • It includes seven lambs in their first year.
28. 28:28
    • Their grain offering is to be of fine flour mixed with oil.
    • Three tenth measures are for each bull.
    • Two tenth measures are for the one ram.
29. 28:29
    • A separate tenth measure is for each lamb.
    • This applies to all seven lambs.
30. 28:30
    • One male goat is to be offered.
    • The goat is to make atonement for them.
31. 28:31
    • These are to be offered in addition to the continual burnt offering.
    • They are to be offered in addition to the grain offering of the continual burnt offering.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
    • They are to be offered with their drink offerings.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

28:1

Where the King James prints LORD in full capitals, it stands for God's personal name in Hebrew, four consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers did not say that name aloud, and read "my Lord" in its place, so English translators followed the same custom by printing the title LORD in capitals.

28:2

The offerings are called God's "bread" or food, and the smoke a "pleasing aroma", the ordinary language of sacrifice across the ancient Near East, used here as set phrases for what is placed on the altar and burned. The KJV's "sweet savour" means a soothing or pleasing smell, not a sweet taste.

28:3

A burnt offering was burned whole on the altar; unlike other sacrifices, no part of it was eaten by the priests or the worshiper. "Continual" in the KJV means regular and unbroken: this pair of lambs was offered every single day, and everything else in the chapter is added on top of it.

28:4

The Hebrew says "between the two evenings," the stretch of late afternoon between the sun's decline and full dark. Its exact limits were debated even in ancient times.

28:5

An ephah was a dry measure of roughly 22 liters (about half a bushel), so a tenth of an ephah is around 2 liters of flour (a few pounds. A hin was a liquid measure of about 3.5 liters (nearly a gallon); a quarter hin is roughly a liter. The KJV's "meat offering" means a grain offering: in 1611 "meat" meant food of any kind, not flesh. "Beaten oil" is olive oil from olives crushed by hand rather than pressed in bulk) the finest grade.

28:6

The instructions given at Mount Sinai are those in Exodus 29, where this daily offering was first commanded.

28:7

A drink offering was wine poured out at the altar, not drunk. The KJV's "strong wine" translates a Hebrew word for fermented drink generally. "The holy place" here means the sanctuary precinct, the enclosed area around the tabernacle, rather than a room inside it.

28:9

The Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, kept as a day of rest from work.

28:10

"Beside" in the King James means in addition to, not instead of, and this matters for the whole chapter: festival offerings pile on top of the daily ones rather than replacing them. "His drink offering" is also older English, where "his" could mean "its"; the word "its" was only just coming into use in 1611.

28:11

Israel's months were lunar, each beginning with the new moon, so "the start of each month" was a fixed monthly festival marked by its own sacrifices.

28:13

The KJV's "a several tenth deal" means a separate tenth-of-an-ephah measure, one for each animal, not one shared between them.

28:14

The grain and wine scale with the size of the animal: most for a bull, less for a ram, least for a lamb. The offering is not just the animal but a full meal set out with it, meat, bread and drink together.

28:15

A sin offering (Hebrew *chattat*) was less a punishment than a cleansing: its blood was used to purify the sanctuary and its equipment from the defilement that the people's wrongdoing and impurity were thought to accumulate there.

28:16

The first month, later called Nisan, fell in early spring (March–April). Passover recalled the night Israel left Egypt; its name comes from the account of the destroyer "passing over" Israelite houses. Since a day was reckoned from sunset, the fourteenth day's Passover meal ran into the evening that began the fifteenth.

28:17

Bread made without yeast is flat and quick to bake; the seven-day Festival of Unleavened Bread ran directly on from Passover and recalled a departure from Egypt too hurried for dough to rise.

28:18

A "holy convocation" is a sacred assembly, the people summoned together. The KJV's "servile work" does not mean slave labor; it means ordinary occupational work, the labor by which people made their living. This is a lighter restriction than the total prohibition of work on the Sabbath and the Day of Atonement.

28:22

The Hebrew verb behind "make an atonement" carries the sense of wiping clean or covering over, the ritual removal of defilement so that the relationship with God is unobstructed.

28:24

"The meat of the sacrifice" again means the food of it, the whole set of flour, oil, wine and animal, not the flesh specifically.

28:26

This is the Festival of Weeks, counted seven weeks (fifty days) from the start of the barley harvest and later known in Greek as Pentecost. "Firstfruits" here means the first grain of the new wheat harvest, brought before the rest of the crop was used.

28:31

"His meat offering" means its grain offering, the flour and oil that went with the daily lamb. The brackets around "they shall be unto you without blemish" are in the King James itself; the requirement applies to the animals just listed.