What Does Exodus 29:38 Mean?
This is what you offer on the altar. Two lambs of a year, day by day continually.
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
Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually.THE KEY
The verse locates the sacred in recurrence: the offering returns each day, not as a singular spectacle.
THE MEANING
Your days are shaped by what keeps returning. This verse gives the altar a steady rhythm: two young lambs offered day by day, continually. The offering belongs to the shape of ordinary time.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that sacred life happens only in rare, dramatic moments; here, its form is a steady daily return.
THE ROOT
תַּעֲשֶׂה
taʿaseh
GROWS FROM
עשה
Do, make, carry out.
The KJV renders תַּעֲשֶׂה (taʿaseh, “you shall do/make”) as “offer.” That broad action-word lets the offering appear as an enacted work, carried out in the day’s repeated rhythm.
ALSO GROWS
ʿasah: Do, make.
עָשָׂה
This is the verb beneath the verse’s instruction: what happens at the altar is something done.
maʿaseh: Deed, work.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This related noun keeps the offering connected to an action or work, not only to the animal being offered.
מִזְבֵּחַ
mizbeach
GROWS FROM
זבח
Sacrifice, slaughter.
The altar’s Hebrew name shares the root זבח (zavach, “sacrifice”) with the act and offering itself. Place and action stay joined: the name of the altar carries what happens there.
ALSO GROWS
zavach: Sacrifice, slaughter.
זָבַח
The verb names the action carried out at the altar.
zevach: Sacrifice, animal offering.
זֶבַח
This noun shares the altar’s root, linking the place to what is brought there.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives offering a daily rhythm and extends its language into prayer.
And you shall say to them, This is the offering of fire that you shall bring near to the LORD; two whole lambs of the first year, day by day, for an unbroken ascending offering.Let my prayer be set before you as smoke, and the lifting of my palms as the evening offering.Every priest stands each day serving and offering the same slain offerings again and again, which can never carry away shortcomings.THE THREAD
The slaughtered offerings of God are a broken breath; a broken and crushed heart, O God, you do not despise.The Hebrew word for “sacrifices,” זִבְחֵי (zivchei, sacrifices), shares the זבח (zavach, sacrifice) root with מִזְבֵּחַ (mizbeach, altar) here. Psalm 51 carries that offering-root into the image of broken breath and heart, opening what may be brought before God beyond the daily lambs.
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