What Does Numbers 29:17 Mean?
And on the second day you offer twelve young bulls, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year, without blemish.
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 on the second day ye shall offer twelve young bullocks, two rams, fourteen lambs of the first year without spot:THE KEY
The lambs are temimim, complete and sound, so the offering’s measure includes wholeness alongside exact count.
THE MEANING
The day’s offering has a measured shape: twelve bulls, two rams, and fourteen first-year lambs. The lambs are described as whole and sound, joining exact number with wholeness in what is brought.
THE ROOT
תְּמִימִם
temimim
GROWS FROM
תמם
To be complete, whole, or brought to its full form.
The verse’s “without spot” comes from tamim, from tamam: to be complete and sound. The same root can describe a person as whole and blameless, and integrity as completeness, joining bodily soundness to an undivided life.
ALSO GROWS
tam: Whole; blameless; complete.
תָּם
This related form shows that the same root can describe a person as whole, as well as an animal without defect.
tom: Integrity; completeness.
תֹּם
This noun carries wholeness into the sense of integrity, revealing a wider range beneath “without spot.”
THE PATTERN
Wholeness is expressed as soundness in what is offered and integrity in the life that stands before God.
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, I am God Almighty; walk before my face, and be whole.A Psalm of David. Judge me, O LORD, for I walk in my wholeness, and I lean my full weight upon the LORD; so I do not slip.But let the bearing up under have its complete work, that you may be complete and entire, with nothing left behind.THE THREAD
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, I am God Almighty; walk before my face, and be whole.Numbers calls the lambs temimim, “whole” or “sound”; Genesis uses the same form when God says, “be thou perfect.” The shared root joins an animal’s bodily soundness with the completeness of a person’s walk before God.
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