What Does Numbers 29:29 Mean?

And on the sixth day, eight young bulls, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year, without blemish.

Numbers 29:29 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And on the sixth day eight bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year without blemish:

THE KEY

The lambs are called tamim, whole and sound, so the verse’s final detail carries the language of wholeness.

THE MEANING

You encounter devotion here in exact, material form: eight bulls, two rams, and fourteen yearling lambs for the sixth day. The lambs are described as without blemish, a phrase rooted in the idea of being whole and sound. The verse gives what is brought both a count and a condition.

THE ROOT

תְּמִימִם

tamim

GROWS FROM

תמם

t-m-m

To be complete, whole, or sound.

The word translated “without blemish” is tamim, from tamam: complete, whole, sound. The root’s language of wholeness can describe both an intact offering and integrity, joining outward soundness with a broader sense of being whole.

ALSO GROWS

tamam: To be complete or come to an end.

תָּמַם

This verb is the root seed beneath the lambs’ description as whole and sound.

tam: Whole, blameless, or integral.

תָּם

This related adjective shows the root can describe integrity as well as physical soundness.

tummah: Integrity.

תֻּמָּה

This noun carries the same root idea of wholeness into the language of a person’s integrity.

THE PATTERN

Scripture describes what is brought before God through both its concrete form and its wholeness.

And whoever brings near a wholeness offering to the LORD to set apart his vow, or a willing offering from the herd or the sheep, it shall be whole to be pleasing; no blemish shall be in it.

Leviticus 22:21 · SDVAs in Numbers, the offering’s prescribed form includes the condition of being whole and sound.

You shall be whole with the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 18:13 · SDVThe same Hebrew word family used for a whole offering also describes being whole with God.

but with the costly blood of the Anointed One, as of a lamb without blemish and without stain.

1 Peter 1:19 · SDVThe image of the unblemished lamb appears again as a way of describing what is offered.

THE THREAD

You shall be whole with the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 18:13 · SDV

The Hebrew word translated “without blemish” belongs to the same tamim word family rendered “perfect” here. One word reaches from an intact offering to a whole relation with God.

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