What Does 2 Chronicles 29:32 Mean?
And the number of the burnt offerings which the assembly brought was seventy bulls, a hundred rams, and two hundred lambs. All these were for a burnt offering to the LORD.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the number of the burnt offerings, which the congregation brought, was threescore and ten bullocks, an hundred rams, and two hundred lambs: all these were for a burnt offering to the LORD.THE KEY
The offering’s Hebrew name turns a tally of animals into a count of ascents.
THE MEANING
The verse holds worship as a shared, precisely counted offering: seventy bulls, one hundred rams, and two hundred lambs are brought to the LORD. The Hebrew word for “burnt offering” also carries the sense of ascent, giving the tally a direction: upward to the LORD.
THE ROOT
עֹלָה
ʿōlāh
GROWS FROM
עלה
ʿ-l-h
Ascend, go up.
The Hebrew noun עֹלָה (ʿōlāh, burnt offering) comes from עלה (ʿ-l-h, ascend or go up). English names what happens to the animals in the fire; Hebrew also carries the offering’s upward direction, so the count is a count of offerings named for rising to the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālāh: Ascend; go up.
עָלָה
This verb is the root’s basic motion, revealing the upward sense held in עֹלָה (ʿōlāh, burnt offering).
maʿălāh: Ascent; step or degree.
מַעֲלָה
This noun names an ascent or rising step, echoing the upward movement contained in the offering’s name.
THE PATTERN
An offering is named by its movement upward into the presence of God.
And Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird, and sent up rising offerings on the altar.And when he stretched his gaze upon him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said to him, Your prayers and your acts of compassion have come up as a memorial before God.But I hold everything in full, and I overflow; I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a fragrance of sweetness, a sacrifice welcomed, well pleasing to God.THE THREAD
And its inward parts and its legs he shall wash in water, and the priest shall send all of it up in smoke upon the altar, a rising offering, an offering of fire, a fragrance that settles to the LORD.The Hebrew calls this a burnt offering עֹלָה (ʿōlāh), from עלה (ʿ-l-h, ascend), the same root carried by the offering in 2 Chronicles. Leviticus describes the whole offering rising in fire; the verse’s count is therefore a count of offerings whose name holds that ascent.
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