What Does Numbers 28:20 Mean?
And their gift shall be of flour mixed with oil; three tenths you shall make for a young bull, and two tenths for a ram;
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 their meat offering shall be of flour mingled with oil: three tenth deals shall ye offer for a bullock, and two tenth deals for a ram;THE KEY
The word for the flour being “mingled” is also used for Babel’s confounded speech: the same root for mixing can describe a prepared offering or a scrambled language.
THE MEANING
You meet a gift made of flour blended with oil, measured separately for the bull and the ram. The verse presents the offering as a prepared whole: its ingredients are joined, and its quantity is set. The root beneath “mingled” also holds the sense of confounding, showing that joining alone does not guarantee harmony.
THE ROOT
בְּלוּלָה
belulah
GROWS FROM
בלל
b-l-l
To mix, mingle, or confound.
“mixed” in this verse is belulah. The Hebrew behind “mingled” is a form of בלל (balal), whose range includes both mixing and confounding. English presents the blend but hides that the same root describes language made unintelligible at Babel: mixing can form a prepared whole, or scramble meaning.
ALSO GROWS
belulah: Mixed or blended, as flour is with oil.
בְּלוּלָה
Here the root describes ingredients joined into the grain offering; Exodus 29:2 uses it for cakes mingled with oil as well.
balal: Mixed or confounded, as when the LORD confounds the language at Babel.
בָּלַל
Genesis 11:9 uses this root for speech made unintelligible, revealing that mixing can produce confusion as well as a prepared blend.
THE PATTERN
What is mingled into a substance helps shape the character of the whole.
And unrisen bread, and unrisen cakes mixed with oil, and unrisen thin cakes anointed with oil. You make them of fine wheat flour.Therefore its name was called Babel, the mixing, because there the LORD mixed up the lip of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them across the face of all the earth.It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until the whole was leavened.THE THREAD
Therefore its name was called Babel, the mixing, because there the LORD mixed up the lip of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them across the face of all the earth.The root בלל (balal, “mix or confound”) appears in both passages: here it describes flour blended with oil, and there it describes language confounded. The shared root holds both senses, while the verses show how differently a mixture can take shape.
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