What Does Leviticus 23:16 Mean in the King James?
Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew word for counting also means recounting, so the offering arrives at the end of a measured story.
THE MEANING
Seven full Sabbaths and then fifty days form a measured span whose completion opens a day of fresh grain offering to the LORD. Time here is not an indistinct wait; its completed count arrives at a concrete gift. The word “new” carries the sense of renewal, marking the offering as a fresh beginning at the end of a cycle.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that a new offering appears without process: it comes after a count brought to completion.
THE ROOT
תִּסְפְּרוּ
tis-peru
GROWS FROM
ס־פ־ר
s-p-r
Count, recount, or relate.
“number” in this verse is tis-peru. The verb calls for counting, but its root also carries recounting and telling. The fifty days are not a vague stretch: they are tracked to their threshold, where the offering is brought.
ALSO GROWS
sefer: Book or scroll.
סֵפֶר
A book preserves what has been set down and recounted; the counted days, too, form a sequence that can be followed.
sippur: Account or story.
סִפּוּר
The shared root links counting with telling: the days form a sequence that arrives at the offering.
mispar: Number or count.
מִסְפָּר
This branch makes quantity explicit, as the passage does with its fifty days.
חֲדָשָׁה
chadashah
GROWS FROM
ח־ד־ש
ch-d-sh
Be new or renew.
The adjective for the offering shares its root with chodesh, the word for month or new moon. Newness here carries the sense of renewal within a recurring cycle, as the offering comes at the end of a counted span.
ALSO GROWS
chadash: New or fresh.
חָדָשׁ
This is the same adjective in its masculine form, sharing the passage’s sense of freshness.
chodesh: Month or new moon.
חֹדֶשׁ
The month is named through the same root of newness, linking the offering’s freshness with recurring cycles.
THE PATTERN
A completed measure of time becomes a threshold for a new offering or a changed state.
Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the LORD thy God with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God, according as the LORD thy God hath blessed thee:And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.THE THREAD
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.Genesis 15:5 uses the same Hebrew root twice, though the KJV renders it “tell” and “number”; Leviticus uses that root for counting the days. The shared root lets counting and recounting stand together: here the days form a bounded sequence leading to the fiftieth day and its offering.
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