What Does Numbers 15:21 Mean?
From the first of your dough you shall give to the LORD a lifted offering in your generations.
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
Of the first of your dough ye shall give unto the LORD an heave offering in your generations.THE KEY
The offering is the portion lifted from the batch at its beginning, so the first part carries the meaning of the whole.
THE MEANING
The first portion of what you prepare is lifted to the LORD, and this offering extends through your generations. Its beginning shows that the whole batch stands in relation to the One who receives it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is given to the LORD is only what remains: here, the first portion is lifted.
THE ROOT
תְּרוּמָה
terumah
GROWS FROM
רום
rum
to rise, be high, or lift up; terumah is a portion lifted or set apart
“lifted offering” in this verse is terumah. “Heave offering” carries the idea of lifting within its Hebrew name: the first dough is marked out as a portion raised toward the LORD. The word holds giving and elevation together, the offering is set apart from the batch, not merely described as a payment.
ALSO GROWS
herim: raised, lifted
הֵרִים
This verb from the same root makes the lifting inside terumah visible.
ram: high, exalted
רָם
It shares the root’s sense of being raised, illuminating the elevation implied by the offering.
רֵאשִׁית
reshit
GROWS FROM
ראש
rosh
head, top, or chief; by extension, beginning or first
English “first” marks sequence, while the Hebrew also carries the image of a head, the leading part of what follows. The first portion can therefore stand for the batch as a whole, a connection made explicit in the image of the firstfruit and the lump in Romans 11:16.
ALSO GROWS
rosh: head, top, chief
רֹאשׁ
This is the root image behind the idea of what comes first or leads.
rishon: first, former
רִאשׁוֹן
This related form carries the same head-and-beginning sense into the sequence of what comes next.
THE PATTERN
The first portion is lifted as a sign of the whole yield’s relation to the LORD.
The first of the first-ripened of your ground you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a kid in his mother's milk.Give the LORD weight with your wealth, and with the first of all your yield.And if the first portion is set apart, so is the lump. And if the root is set apart, so are the branches.THE THREAD
And if the first portion is set apart, so is the lump. And if the root is set apart, so are the branches.Romans makes explicit the relation this offering enacts: the first portion and the whole batch belong together. The first is not isolated from what follows; it reveals the whole in miniature.
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