What Does Numbers 29:38 Mean?
And one shaggy goat as an offering for falling short; beside the unbroken ascending offering, its gift, and its poured offering.
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; beside the continual burnt offering, and his meat offering, and his drink offering.THE KEY
The offering for what is missing stands beside what continues, so the missing does not become the whole story.
THE MEANING
The verse gives what is missing its own place: one goat is brought as an offering for it, beside the continual burnt offering, with grain and drink offerings also named. The offering for missing appears within a continuing pattern, rather than replacing it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A failure must cancel what continues. Here, the offering for missing stands beside the continual offering.
THE ROOT
חַטָּאת
ḥaṭṭāʾt
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥṭʾ
to miss, err, or go wrong
“offering for falling short” in this verse is ḥaṭṭāʾt. The same root names both the act of missing and the offering associated with it, a link the English phrase can conceal. Here, that offering has a distinct place beside the continual one.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: to miss or go wrong
חָטָא
This verb names the act whose root also appears in the word for the offering.
ḥēṭʾ: a missing or fault
חֵטְא
This noun shows the root naming the missing itself, which the offering addresses.
THE PATTERN
What is missing is named and given a place within a recurring pattern of offering.
And one kid of the goats, as an offering for falling short, shall be brought near to the LORD, beside the unbroken ascending offering, and its poured offering.Or if his falling short in which he has missed the mark is perceived by him, he brings his drawing near, a male kid of the goats without blemish;But in those slain offerings, a reminding of shortcomings is made again each year.THE THREAD
Or if his falling short in which he has missed the mark is perceived by him, he brings his drawing near, a male kid of the goats without blemish;The phrase “his sin, wherein he hath sinned” carries חטא (ḥṭʾ, to miss) twice: first as the missing, then as the act of missing. The goat brought for it makes explicit what Numbers 29:38 compresses into “one goat for a sin offering.”
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