What Does Numbers 15:6 Mean?
Or for a ram, you shall prepare a gift of two tenth measures of flour mixed with a third of a hin of oil.
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
Or for a ram, thou shalt prepare for a meat offering two tenth deals of flour mingled with the third part of an hin of oil.THE KEY
The word for flour “mingled” with oil shares its root with the word for confusing speech: mixture can take shape as a prepared offering or unsettle understanding.
THE MEANING
This verse gives the offering a precise form: a ram is accompanied by two tenth deals of flour mingled with a third of a hin of oil. The mixture belongs to the preparation itself, and its proportions remain exact.
THE ROOT
בְּלוּלָה
belulah from balal
GROWS FROM
בלל
To mix or mingle; in another use, to confuse through mixing.
The root holds together two outcomes of mixing: flour and oil joined into a prepared offering, and speech mixed until people no longer understand one another. The verse’s measured preparation gives the joining a defined form.
ALSO GROWS
balul: Mingled or mixed, as flour with oil.
בָּלוּל
This is the form used for the joined ingredients in the offering.
balal: To mix or confuse, as language is confused at Babel.
בָּלַל
The same root shows that mixing can also unsettle communication, opening a striking contrast with the ordered mixture here.
THE PATTERN
An offering takes visible form through what is brought forward and prepared.
And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock, and of their fat. And the LORD gazed upon Abel and upon his offering.And when you bring near a gift baked in the oven, it is unleavened cakes of fine flour mixed with oil, or thin unleavened wafers anointed with oil.Therefore I urge you, brothers, through the compassions of God, to set your bodies beside God as a living sacrifice, set apart, well-pleasing to him, which is your true service.THE THREAD
Come, let us go down, and there mix up their lip, so that they may not hear one another's lip and respond.Numbers uses the root בלל (balal, to mix) for the flour mingled with oil; Genesis uses the same root for confusing speech. The shared root holds two edges of mixing together: ingredients can be joined into a prepared gift, while speech can be mixed until understanding breaks down.
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