What Does Numbers 7:5 Mean in the King James?
Take it of them, that they may be to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; and thou shalt give them unto the Levites, to every man according to his service.
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 “service” shares its root with “work” and “servant”: what is given is fitted to the labor each person carries.
THE MEANING
Here, service is particular and concrete: each person carries a distinct task, and provision is placed into specific hands according to that work. The verse dissolves the assumption that belonging requires everyone to receive the same allotment or carry the same load.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that equal belonging requires identical work or identical provision.
THE ROOT
עֲבֹדָה
avodah
GROWS FROM
עבד
work, serve
Avodah, “service,” grows from the same root as the verb for working or serving and the noun for a servant. The Hebrew binds the task to the one carrying it: provision is assigned in response to the work each Levite bears.
ALSO GROWS
avad: to work, serve
עָבַד
The verb shows that service is active labor, giving the verse’s allotment a practical measure.
eved: servant
עֶבֶד
The shared root links the service to the person who carries it; the work and the worker belong to one word-family.
THE PATTERN
Provision and service take distinct forms according to the work each person carries.
According to the commandment of the LORD they were numbered by the hand of Moses, every one according to his service, and according to his burden: thus were they numbered of him, as the LORD commanded Moses.And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.THE THREAD
According to the commandment of the LORD they were numbered by the hand of Moses, every one according to his service, and according to his burden: thus were they numbered of him, as the LORD commanded Moses.“Service” in both verses is עֲבֹדָה (avodah), from עבד (avad), “to work, serve.” Numbers 4:49 pairs that service with each person’s burden, opening the distribution here as provision fitted to the actual work carried.
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