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Numbers 29: What the Passage Says

113 claims across 40 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Numbers 29 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

God gives Moses the offerings Israel is to present at the festivals of the seventh month. The first day is a day of trumpet blasts, the tenth day is a day of going without food and doing no work, and the fifteenth day begins a seven-day feast with a large daily set of animals that decreases from thirteen bulls to seven. An eighth day closes the feast with a smaller offering. All of these are in addition to the regular daily offering, and to any offerings people bring for vows or by free choice.

Claim by Claim

  1. 29:1
    • In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, there is to be a holy convocation.
    • No laborious work is to be done on that day.
    • That day is a day of blowing the trumpets.
  2. 29:2
    • A burnt offering is to be offered as a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
    • The burnt offering is one young bull.
    • The burnt offering includes one ram.
    • The burnt offering includes seven male lambs a year old.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  3. 29:3
    • The grain offering with them is fine flour mixed with oil.
    • Three tenths of an ephah go with the bull.
    • Two tenths of an ephah go with the ram.
  4. 29:4
    • One tenth of an ephah goes with each lamb, for all seven lambs.
  5. 29:5
    • One male goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • The sin offering is to make atonement for you.
  6. 29:6
    • These offerings are in addition to the monthly burnt offering and its grain offering.
    • These offerings are in addition to the daily burnt offering and its grain offering.
    • These offerings are in addition to their drink offerings.
    • The drink offerings are according to their prescribed manner.
    • These are a pleasing aroma, an offering made by fire to the LORD.
  7. 29:7
    • On the tenth day of this seventh month there is to be a holy convocation.
    • You are to afflict your souls on that day.
    • You are not to do any work on that day.
  8. 29:8
    • A burnt offering is to be offered to the LORD as a pleasing aroma.
    • The burnt offering is one young bull.
    • The burnt offering includes one ram.
    • The burnt offering includes seven male lambs a year old.
    • The animals are to be without blemish for you.
  9. 29:9
    • The grain offering with them is fine flour mixed with oil.
    • Three tenths of an ephah go with the bull.
    • Two tenths of an ephah go with the one ram.
  10. 29:10
    • One tenth of an ephah goes with each lamb, for all seven lambs.
  11. 29:11
    • One male goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the sin offering of atonement.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering and its grain offering.
    • It is in addition to their drink offerings.
  12. 29:12
    • On the fifteenth day of the seventh month there is to be a holy convocation.
    • No laborious work is to be done on that day.
    • A feast is to be kept to the LORD for seven days.
  13. 29:13
    • A burnt offering is to be offered, an offering made by fire, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
    • The burnt offering is thirteen young bulls.
    • The burnt offering includes two rams.
    • The burnt offering includes fourteen male lambs a year old.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  14. 29:14
    • The grain offering with them is fine flour mixed with oil.
    • Three tenths of an ephah go with each of the thirteen bulls.
    • Two tenths of an ephah go with each of the two rams.
  15. 29:15
    • One tenth of an ephah goes with each of the fourteen lambs.
  16. 29:16
    • One male goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering, its grain offering, and its drink offering.
  17. 29:17
    • On the second day twelve young bulls are to be offered.
    • Two rams are to be offered.
    • Fourteen male lambs a year old are to be offered.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  18. 29:18
    • The grain offerings and drink offerings for the bulls, the rams, and the lambs are according to their number.
    • They are according to the prescribed manner.
  19. 29:19
    • One male goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering and its grain offering.
    • It is in addition to their drink offerings.
  20. 29:20
    • On the third day eleven bulls are to be offered.
    • Two rams are to be offered.
    • Fourteen male lambs a year old are to be offered.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  21. 29:21
    • The grain offerings and drink offerings for the bulls, the rams, and the lambs are according to their number.
    • They are according to the prescribed manner.
  22. 29:22
    • One goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering, its grain offering, and its drink offering.
  23. 29:23
    • On the fourth day ten bulls are to be offered.
    • Two rams are to be offered.
    • Fourteen male lambs a year old are to be offered.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  24. 29:24
    • The grain offerings and drink offerings for the bulls, the rams, and the lambs are according to their number.
    • They are according to the prescribed manner.
  25. 29:25
    • One male goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering, its grain offering, and its drink offering.
  26. 29:26
    • On the fifth day nine bulls are to be offered.
    • Two rams are to be offered.
    • Fourteen male lambs a year old are to be offered.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  27. 29:27
    • The grain offerings and drink offerings for the bulls, the rams, and the lambs are according to their number.
    • They are according to the prescribed manner.
  28. 29:28
    • One goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering, its grain offering, and its drink offering.
  29. 29:29
    • On the sixth day eight bulls are to be offered.
    • Two rams are to be offered.
    • Fourteen male lambs a year old are to be offered.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  30. 29:30
    • The grain offerings and drink offerings for the bulls, the rams, and the lambs are according to their number.
    • They are according to the prescribed manner.
  31. 29:31
    • One goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering, its grain offering, and its drink offering.
  32. 29:32
    • On the seventh day seven bulls are to be offered.
    • Two rams are to be offered.
    • Fourteen male lambs a year old are to be offered.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  33. 29:33
    • The grain offerings and drink offerings for the bulls, the rams, and the lambs are according to their number.
    • They are according to the prescribed manner.
  34. 29:34
    • One goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering, its grain offering, and its drink offering.
  35. 29:35
    • On the eighth day there is to be a solemn assembly.
    • No laborious work is to be done on that day.
  36. 29:36
    • A burnt offering is to be offered, an offering made by fire, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
    • The burnt offering is one bull.
    • The burnt offering includes one ram.
    • The burnt offering includes seven male lambs a year old.
    • The animals are to be without blemish.
  37. 29:37
    • The grain offerings and drink offerings for the bull, the ram, and the lambs are according to their number.
    • They are according to the prescribed manner.
  38. 29:38
    • One goat is offered as a sin offering.
    • It is in addition to the continual burnt offering, its grain offering, and its drink offering.
  39. 29:39
    • These things are to be done for the LORD at your appointed feasts.
    • They are in addition to your vows and your freewill offerings.
    • The vows and freewill offerings include burnt offerings, grain offerings, drink offerings, and peace offerings.
  40. 29:40
    • Moses told the Israelites everything the LORD commanded Moses.

Words Worth Explaining

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

29:1
The seventh month is Tishri, falling in our September–October; Israel's religious year began in the spring, so this is the seventh month counting from then, at the close of the harvest. A "holy convocation" (here "holy gathering") was a day on which the whole people were summoned to assemble and normal labor stopped, like a sabbath. "Servile work" in the King James does not mean slaves' work; it means heavy or occupational work, the everyday business by which a person made a living. The trumpets are horns sounded as a signal; this day was later known as Rosh Hashanah.
29:2
A burnt offering was an animal burned whole on the altar, with no part kept back to be eaten. "A sweet savour unto the LORD" is a fixed Hebrew phrase, literally "a soothing smell", used of sacrifices accepted by God; it is a formula, not a comment on God's sense of smell. "Without blemish" means physically unflawed: no injury, disease or defect.
29:3
The King James "meat offering" means a food offering of grain, not of flesh; "meat" in 1611 English meant food of any kind. A "tenth deal" is a tenth of an ephah, roughly two dry quarts or two liters of flour, about four or five pounds. The oil is olive oil, the ordinary cooking fat of the region.
29:5
A sin offering was the sacrifice prescribed to deal with wrongdoing and ritual uncleanness. "Atonement" translates a Hebrew word meaning to wipe clean or cover over, so that what stood between the people and God was removed.
29:6
A drink offering was wine poured out at the altar alongside the animal and grain. "The burnt offering of the month" is the sacrifice appointed for the first day of every month, when the new moon appeared (Numbers 28:11–15); "the daily burnt offering" is the lamb offered every morning and every evening (Numbers 28:3–8). The point is that these festival sacrifices were added on top of the regular ones, not substituted for them.
29:7
This is the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day of the year (Leviticus 16), later called Yom Kippur. "Ye shall afflict your souls" is a Hebrew idiom for self-denial, chiefly going without food, and abstaining from ordinary comforts. Note the stricter rule here: on the other festival days no ordinary work was allowed, but on this day no work of any kind.
29:10
"A several tenth deal" does not mean "several" the way we use it. In 1611 "several" meant separate. Each lamb got its own measure of flour.
29:11
"The sin offering of atonement" is the separate, elaborate ceremony belonging to this day, described in Leviticus 16, in which one goat was sacrificed and another sent away into the wilderness. The goat commanded here is an addition to it.
29:12
This seven-day festival is the Feast of Booths, or Tabernacles (Sukkot), held after the grain, grape and olive harvests were gathered in; during it the people lived in temporary shelters made of branches.
29:13
The number of bulls falls by one on each of the seven days (thirteen, twelve, eleven, and so on down to seven) making seventy bulls in all. Rams, lambs and the goat stay the same each day. Ancient Jewish interpreters connected the seventy to the seventy nations listed in Genesis 10, but the text itself gives no reason for the descending count.
29:17
"Without spot" means the same as "without blemish": no flaw of any kind.
29:18
"After the manner" points back to the fixed ratios given in the previous chapter and repeated above: three tenths of an ephah of flour and half a hin of wine with each bull, two tenths and a third of a hin with each ram, one tenth and a quarter of a hin with each lamb. A hin was roughly four liters. Instead of printing the totals again for every day, the text simply tells the priests to work them out from the number of animals.
29:35
The Hebrew word rendered "solemn assembly" means a closing or concluding gathering: an extra eighth day rounding off the seven-day feast, with a much smaller set of sacrifices. Later Jewish practice calls it Shemini Atzeret.
29:39
Three different kinds of voluntary giving are distinguished from the fixed festival calendar. A vow offering was one a person had promised in advance, often conditional on some request being granted. A freewill offering was given with no obligation at all. A peace offering (also called a fellowship offering) was the one sacrifice largely eaten: the fat was burned, certain portions went to the priests, and the worshiper and his household ate the rest as a shared meal.
29:40
Moses was the leader of Israel. God spoke to him, and he told the people what God said.

Read Numbers 29