What Does Numbers 15:5 Mean?
And you shall prepare a fourth of a hin of wine for a poured offering with the rising offering or sacrifice, for one lamb.
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
And the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering shalt thou prepare with the burnt offering or sacrifice, for one lamb.THE KEY
A lamb’s offering includes a second, measured shape: the wine is a pour joined to it.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks in concrete proportions: one lamb is accompanied by a measured pour of wine. What accompanies the lamb belongs to the offering’s form; the poured portion is part of the act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lamb alone is the complete offering, and the accompanying portion is incidental.
THE ROOT
נֶסֶךְ
nesekh
GROWS FROM
נסך
n-s-k
to pour out; to cast by pouring
“poured offering” in this verse is nesekh. The Hebrew word נֶסֶךְ (nesekh) means a libation, a poured-out portion. The root keeps the act of pouring in view and links this measured wine to the lamb it accompanies.
ALSO GROWS
nasakh: to pour out; to pour as a libation
נָסַךְ
This verb names the action carried by the drink offering: the wine is given as a poured portion.
massekah: a cast or molten image
מַסֵּכָה
This word shares the root’s pouring-and-casting sense, showing how the same root describes both a libation poured out and metal shaped by pouring.
THE PATTERN
What is poured out can become an offering joined to a larger act of service.
With the one lamb, a tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with a fourth of a hin of crushed oil, and a fourth of a hin of wine for a poured offering.But even if I am poured out upon the offering and service of your trust, I rejoice, and rejoice together with you all.For I am already being poured out, and the time of my loosening stands over me.THE THREAD
But even if I am poured out upon the offering and service of your trust, I rejoice, and rejoice together with you all.The Greek verb σπένδομαι (spendomai, “to be poured out as a libation”) shares its root with σπονδή (spondē, “libation”), the Greek term for the drink offering in Numbers 15:5. Philippians carries the same poured-out offering into the image of a life joined to another’s service.
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