What Does Numbers 28:5 Mean in the King James?
And a tenth part of an ephah of flour for a meat offering, mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil.
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 word for “mingled” also names Babel’s confused speech: the same act of mixing can make a prepared whole or break shared understanding.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks in exact proportions: a tenth of an ephah of flour meets a fourth of a hin of oil. The oil is beaten before it is mingled with the flour, so the offering is formed through both pressure and joining.
THE ROOT
בְּלוּלָה
belulah
GROWS FROM
בלל
balal
To mix, mingle, or confuse.
“mingled” in this verse is belulah. At the offering, this root names flour and oil blended together; at Babel, it names speech mixed until understanding breaks down. The word holds both joining and disorder within the act of mixing.
ALSO GROWS
mingled: Mixed or blended.
בְּלוּלָה
This is the word used for the oil joined with the flour in the offering.
confound: “Let us confuse” or mix together.
נָבְלָה
Genesis uses this form for the mixing of languages at Babel, revealing the root shared with “mingled.”
כָּתִית
kathith
GROWS FROM
כתת
kathath
To crush or beat into pieces.
The oil is identified by a process of crushing, so pressure is already part of the ingredient before it is blended. Isaiah uses the same root for swords beaten into plowshares, where force remakes material into a new form.
ALSO GROWS
vekittetu: They shall beat or hammer into pieces.
וְכִתְּתוּ
Isaiah 2:4 uses this root for swords remade as plowshares, showing how crushing force can change a material’s form.
stamped: I crushed or stamped.
וָאֶכֹּת
In Deuteronomy 9:21, Moses uses this form for crushing the calf, another instance of the root’s forceful breaking down.
THE PATTERN
A prepared whole emerges when distinct elements are worked together into one substance.
And if thou bring an oblation of a meat offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil.Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.THE THREAD
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.The same Hebrew root בלל (balal, “mix” or “confound”) appears in both verses. Here, mixing joins ingredients into an offering; at Babel, mixing speech dissolves mutual understanding.
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