What Does Numbers 18:27 Mean?
And this your lifted offering shall be counted to you, as though it were the grain of the threshing floor, and as the fullness of the winepress.
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 this your heave offering shall be reckoned unto you, as though it were the corn of the threshingfloor, and as the fulness of the winepress.THE KEY
What is lifted from your share is reckoned in the very language of the harvest it came from.
THE MEANING
Your set-apart portion is reckoned to you as grain from the threshing floor and as the winepress at full yield. The verse counts the offering in the concrete terms of harvest.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that what is set apart becomes invisible in the accounting: the verse reckons the offering as the produce of the threshing floor and winepress.
THE ROOT
נֶחְשַׁב
nechshav
GROWS FROM
חשב
think, devise, reckon, or account
The root behind “reckoned” can mean both thinking and accounting. Here, the offering is counted to you in the concrete terms of harvest produce.
ALSO GROWS
machashavah: thought, plan
מַחֲשָׁבָה
The same root links the act of accounting with the forming of a thought or plan.
cheshbon: account, calculation
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
This branch makes the accounting sense explicit: the offering is entered into the measure of the harvest.
תְּרוּמַתְכֶם
terumatkhem
GROWS FROM
רום
rise, be high, lift up
“lifted offering” in this verse is terumatkhem. The Hebrew names the offering as a lifted or raised portion. That raised portion is then reckoned as grain from the threshing floor and fullness from the winepress.
ALSO GROWS
rum: rise, be high
רוּם
The root’s basic sense gives the offering its image of being raised up.
marom: height, high place
מָרוֹם
This branch carries the same root’s sense of height, echoing the raised portion.
מְלֵאָה
mele'ah
GROWS FROM
מלא
fill, be full
Here, “fulness” refers to the full produce of the winepress, not an abstract quality. The lifted portion is counted in the language of a harvest brought to fullness.
ALSO GROWS
male: full
מָלֵא
This branch names the state of being full that gives the winepress image its force.
mille: fill, make full
מִלֵּא
This form expresses the action of filling, connecting the verse’s fullness to a yield brought to completion.
THE PATTERN
What is set apart is accounted by the concrete yield from which it comes.
And all the tenth of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD's; it is set apart to the LORD.Give the LORD weight with your wealth, and with the first of all your yield.On the first day of the week, let each of you lay something by at his own side, storing it up, as his way has gone well for him, so that no gatherings are made when I come.THE THREAD
But the tenths of the children of Israel, which they lift up to the LORD as a lifted offering, I have given to the Levites as a holding. Therefore I have said to them, Among the children of Israel they shall have no holding.Here the tithes are called תְּרוּמָה (terumah, a lifted portion) before the next verse says how the Levites’ own contribution is reckoned. The shared root connects receiving the tithe with setting a portion apart from it.
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