What Does Numbers 28:22 Mean?
And one shaggy goat as an offering for falling short, to make a covering for you.
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 one goat for a sin offering, to make an atonement for you.THE KEY
The verse joins the missing and the covering: what falls short is met by a covering made for you.
THE MEANING
The missing is named without being made the end of the story: a covering is made for you. What stands out is the direction of the action, the offering makes atonement for you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what you miss leaves you forever exposed: the verse places a covering exactly where the missing is named.
THE ROOT
לְכַפֵּר
lekapper
GROWS FROM
כפר
to cover or cover over
The root of “atonement” holds the image of covering. English can make atonement sound abstract; the Hebrew connects it to a covering made for you, where the missing is named.
ALSO GROWS
kippēr: to cover, make atonement
כִּפֶּר
This is the verb used in the verse: the goat is offered to make a covering for you.
kappōret: the cover of the ark
כַּפֹּרֶת
This branch keeps the concrete sense of a cover in view, illuminating the covering image within “atonement.”
kōpher: pitch, a coating
כֹּפֶר
Pitch covers and seals a surface, another branch that makes the root’s covering sense tangible.
חַטָּאת
ḥaṭṭāʾt
GROWS FROM
חטא
to miss or go wrong
“offering for falling short” in this verse is ḥaṭṭāʾt. The offering’s name shares its root with words for missing and wrongdoing. The phrase therefore holds the missing and its covering together: the offering is for the missing, and atonement is made for you.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: to miss, do wrong
חָטָא
The verb gives the root’s action: the offering is named in relation to what has gone wrong or been missed.
ḥēṭʾ: missing, wrongdoing
חֵטְא
This noun shares the root with “sin offering,” preserving the link between the offering and the missing it addresses.
THE PATTERN
Covering meets what is missing and reaches both the people and the place of worship.
And Aaron shall make a covering upon its horns once in a year, with the blood of the offering for falling short, the offering of coverings; once in the year he shall cover it throughout your generations; it is most set apart to the LORD.He makes a covering for the set-apart place because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and for their rebellions in all their shortcomings, and so he does for the tent of meeting, which dwells among them in the midst of their uncleanness.Therefore he was bound to become like his brothers in all things, so that he might become a compassionate and steady high priest in the things toward God, to make a covering for the shortcomings of the people.THE THREAD
And Aaron shall make a covering upon its horns once in a year, with the blood of the offering for falling short, the offering of coverings; once in the year he shall cover it throughout your generations; it is most set apart to the LORD.The same כפר (kaphar, cover) root appears in “to make an atonement” here and in Exodus 30:10. Numbers names the goat as a covering for you; Exodus carries that same covering to the altar.
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