What Does Numbers 29:3 Mean in the King James?

And their meat offering shall be of flour mingled with oil, three tenth deals for a bullock, and two tenth deals for a ram,

Numbers 29:3 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The Hebrew root behind mingled also describes the confounding of speech at Babel: mixture can join ingredients or disrupt understanding.

THE MEANING

The verse gives the offering a precise, material form: flour mingled with oil, measured as three tenths for the bull and two for the ram. Its details hold together mixture and proportion, so the offering is described in particulars rather than left abstract.

THE ROOT

בְּלוּלָה

belulah

GROWS FROM

בלל

Mix, mingle, or confound.

“mingled” in this verse is belulah. The same Hebrew root describes flour mixed with oil here and language confounded in Genesis 11:7. English gives these different outcomes separate words, while Hebrew holds both in the act of mixing.

ALSO GROWS

balal: Mix, mingle, or confound.

בָּלַל

In Genesis 11:7, this verb describes the confounding of language until people cannot understand one another.

belulah: Mingled, mixed.

בְּלוּלָה

This is the form used for the fine flour in this verse; it names the joining of the ingredients.

שֶׁמֶן

shemen

GROWS FROM

שמן

Be fat or grow rich; the noun names oil.

The Hebrew word for oil belongs to a root family that also describes fatness and richness. The offering’s oil is a concrete ingredient, while its word-family carries the added sense of richness.

ALSO GROWS

shamen: Grow fat, become rich.

שָׁמֵן

Deuteronomy 32:15 uses a form of this verb for Jeshurun growing fat; the shared consonants connect the condition of richness with the word for oil.

shemenah: Fat, rich.

שְׁמֵנָה

Genesis 49:20 uses this form to describe rich bread, extending the root’s material sense of richness into food.

THE PATTERN

An offering takes concrete form through both measured quantity and prepared mixture.

And with the one lamb a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil; and the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering.

Exodus 29:40 · KJVThe offering is specified through measured portions of flour, oil, and wine.

And if thy oblation be a meat offering baken in a pan, it shall be of fine flour unleavened, mingled with oil.

Leviticus 2:5 · KJVThe offering’s form is defined by its flour, preparation, and mixture with oil.

Then shall he bring with a bullock a meat offering of three tenth deals of flour mingled with half an hin of oil.

Numbers 15:9 · KJVThe flour and oil are measured together in a quantity corresponding to the bull.

THE THREAD

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

Genesis 11:7 · KJV

The Hebrew word for mingled here comes from ⁨בלל⁩ (balal), the same root translated confound in Genesis 11:7. In one verse the root joins flour and oil; in the other, mixed language breaks understanding.

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