Twelve Offerings Receive Twelve Full Entries

“Fully set up” is kallot, “finished”, the verb of Genesis 2:2, where God ended his work, and of Exodus 40:33, “So Moses finished the work.” The anointing of the tabernacle and altar is described in Leviticus 8:10–11. The date is a month before the census of chapter 1.

The princes are identified three ways: heads of fathers’ houses, princes of the tribes, and those “over them that were numbered”, the men who stood beside Moses in the census. Rashi, following the midrash, made them the Hebrew officers beaten by Pharaoh’s taskmasters in Exodus 5:14.

“Covered wagons” is eglot tsav; tsav is rare, and Isaiah 66:20 uses it for “litters”, so these may have been canopied carts. Six wagons for twelve princes means each pair shared one, while each gave an ox of his own.

The princes brought the wagons before any command had been given. The LORD’s instruction comes afterward, to accept what they had offered on their own initiative.

“Take it of them” approves the gift after the fact. The wagons are put to the Levites’ service “according to his service”, so the gift of the princes is converted at once into the needs of the work.

Moses himself distributes the carts. The verse is a bare record of transfer, from the tribes’ leaders to the tribe that would carry the sanctuary.

Two wagons and four oxen give a yoke of two oxen to each cart. The Gershonites’ curtains and skins were bulky but relatively light.

Merari receives two thirds of the transport, four wagons and eight oxen, for boards, bars, pillars and sockets. Ithamar, who supervised Merari’s loads in 4:33, supervises the carts as well.

When David finally brought the ark to Jerusalem, “the children of the Levites bare the ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves thereon, as Moses commanded” (1 Chronicles 15:15). His earlier attempt with a cart had ended in Uzzah’s death.

“Dedicating” is chanukkah, and the phrase “dedication of the altar” gave its name to the later festival of Hanukkah, which marked the rededication of the temple altar in 164 BC. The princes’ gifts are brought “before the altar”, which is the thing being dedicated.

“Each prince on his day” is in Hebrew doubled: “one prince for a day, one prince for a day”. The instruction to spread the gifts over twelve days comes from the LORD, not from the princes.

Nahshon is the only one of the twelve not called “prince” in his heading; the other eleven carry the title. The rabbis suggested the title was withheld from the first so that he would not grow proud of going first.

“Meat offering” is the grain offering of Leviticus 2; in 1611 “meat” meant food of any kind. “Charger” is qe’arah, a deep dish or platter, the word used for the dishes on the table of showbread (Exodus 25:29).

“Spoon” translates kaf, the palm of the hand: a small hollow pan shaped like a cupped palm. It holds incense, not flour, and it is the only gold in the gift.

The burnt offering (olah, “that which goes up”) was burned whole on the altar (Leviticus 1:9). A “young bullock” is literally “a bull, son of the herd”, and the three animals rise in size from lamb to ram to bull.

Leviticus 4:22–23 prescribes exactly this animal, a male kid of the goats, for the sin offering of a ruler, and the word there for ruler is nasi, the same word as “prince” here. Each prince brings the offering assigned to his rank.

Seventeen of the twenty-one animals are peace offerings, eaten by the offerers after the fat was burned. The entry closes with Nahshon’s name again, “this was the offering of Nahshon”, so each gift is framed by its giver at both ends.

A midrash held that Issachar, a tribe known for learning (1 Chronicles 12:32), had advised the other princes to bring these gifts. The King James “did offer” renders the verb the Hebrew repeats in the following verse.

Only Nethaneel’s gift opens “He offered for his offering”, repeating the verb; the other eleven read “His offering was”. Rashi noticed the difference and drew a lesson from it; the text itself leaves it unexplained.

The King James word order changes for the second day: “spoon of gold of ten shekels” where the first read “spoon of ten shekels of gold”. The Hebrew is the same in both places. Ten shekels of gold weighed about 115 grams.

“Lamb of the first year” is literally “son of its year”, an animal less than a year old. It is the smallest and youngest of the three burnt offering animals.

“Kid of the goats” is se’ir izzim. Se’ir means “hairy one”, and in the plural the same word names the goat idols that Leviticus 17:7 forbids, translated there as “devils”.

“He goats” is attudim, full-grown bucks. The word is also used of leaders: Isaiah 14:9 calls the dead kings “the chief ones of the earth”, literally the he goats, and Jeremiah 50:8 tells the exiles to go out “as the he goats before the flocks”.

From the third day on, the headings read “prince of the children of” the tribe. Zebulun’s prince completes the eastern camp: the three tribes that will lead the march have now all given.

“Bowl” is mizraq, from zaraq, to dash or toss: a basin normally used to catch blood and throw it against the altar. Here it arrives full of flour and oil, clean for its first use.

A third form appears in English, “golden spoon”. Psalm 141:2 later asks, “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense”, joining the smoke of this offering to spoken prayer.

Nothing of the burnt offering was eaten. Only its skin went to the officiating priest (Leviticus 7:8); everything else was burned.

The sin offering at a dedication does not imply that the prince had committed a particular wrong. Jacob Milgrom argued that chatta’t is better called a purification offering: its blood cleanses the sanctuary itself.

Peace offerings had to be eaten within two days (Leviticus 7:16–18). Seventeen animals would feed a very large company, so each prince’s day must have ended in a feast for his tribe.

Reuben, the firstborn, gives on the fourth day, after the whole eastern camp. His prince opens the southern camp as he opens its line of march.

“Of the weight of” is the third English wording for the same weights. The charger’s 130 shekels came to around one and a half kilograms of silver.

Incense had already cost two lives, when Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire with it (Leviticus 10:1–2). The incense brought in Reuben’s gold pan was for the priests to use, not the prince.

Before a burnt offering was killed, the one offering it laid his hand on its head (Leviticus 1:4), so that it would be “accepted for him”. The prince would do so three times on his day.

In Hebrew the sin offering line is four words, “one kid of goats for sin offering”, the shortest line in every entry. Reuben’s is as short as the rest.

The two oxen are the only item in the whole gift that comes in a pair. Everything else is one, five, or a matched set.

The Talmud identified Shelumiel with Zimri, the Simeonite prince killed by Phinehas in 25:14, although the text gives Zimri a different father, Salu. It is a rabbinic identification, not something Numbers says.

“Fine flour” is solet, the best wheat meal, sifted fine. The contrast with the coarse barley meal of the jealousy offering in 5:15 is deliberate in the Book of Numbers: this is a gift of honour.

Incense returns in chapter 16 as the test between Korah’s company and Aaron. The 250 men who offered it with their censers died, and Aaron’s incense stopped the plague that followed (16:46–48).

The trio of bullock, ram and lamb is the core of the festival sacrifices set out in chapters 28 and 29, where their numbers change from feast to feast.

Leviticus 10:16–20 records a dispute over a sin-offering goat: Moses was angry that Aaron’s sons had burned it instead of eating it in the holy place. The priests were meant to eat such meat as part of the rite.

The name shelamim is linked to shalom, peace or wholeness. Others connect it to shillem, to pay or complete, as an offering that fulfils a vow. Either way, it is the sacrifice shared between altar, priest and worshipper.

Gad closes the southern camp at the halfway point of the twelve days. The same tribe would later join Reuben in building a great altar by the Jordan (Joshua 22:10), a copy of this one, and had to explain it was not for sacrifice.

“Mingled” is balal, to mix or stir. It is the verb Genesis 11:9 plays on in naming Babel, “because the LORD did there confound the language”.

The gold for these pans presumably came from the jewellery the Israelites asked of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:35), the same source that had supplied the golden calf (Exodus 32:2–4). The text does not say so; it is an inference.

Leviticus 1 allows three kinds of burnt offering: from the herd, from the flock, or birds for those who could afford no more. The princes bring herd and flock and no birds.

The goat as sin offering is best known from the Day of Atonement, when its blood was taken inside the veil (Leviticus 16:15). Here the goat is killed in the court, and its blood goes on the outer altar being dedicated.

From the rams and lambs of the peace offering, the whole fat tail was burned on the altar with the kidney fat (Leviticus 3:9). Sheep in the region carried much of their fat in broad tails.

If the offerings ran on twelve consecutive days, one fell on a sabbath. A rabbinic tradition assigned it to Elishama of Ephraim on the seventh day, and concluded that this gift overrode the sabbath rest.

The midrash gave symbolic meanings to the weights: 130 for Adam’s age when Seth was born (Genesis 5:3), 70 for the nations listed in Genesis 10 (Numbers Rabbah). The Book of Numbers gives only the weights.

The same word, kappot, names the gold spoons made for Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 7:50. The vessel given by a tribal prince in the wilderness became a standard fitting of the permanent house.

“Ram” is ayil, a word also used for strong men and leaders: “the mighty men of Moab” in Exodus 15:15 are literally “the rams of Moab”. Each prince offers a ram as his tribe’s strength.

Hebrews 9:21 recalls that Moses sprinkled “with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry”. The letter reads the dedication of the sanctuary as a work of blood from the first day.

The first peace offerings of the covenant were the oxen offered by young men at the foot of Sinai (Exodus 24:5), before the covenant meal on the mountain. The sanctuary’s dedication repeats that meal at the new altar.

Gamaliel’s father’s name, Pedahzur, means “the Rock has redeemed”, using padah, the verb for redeeming the firstborn in 3:46–51. The eighth day belongs to Manasseh, Joseph’s firstborn.

The sanctuary shekel was a standard weight kept at the sanctuary, protecting gifts from the “divers weights” Deuteronomy 25:13 forbids. Every silver dish is weighed by the same stone.

The incense was burned on the golden altar morning and evening, when the lamps were dressed and lit (Exodus 30:7–8). A pan of it was a supply for the daily service inside the tent.

A bull was the costliest animal an Israelite could offer. At the priests’ first public service Aaron offered a calf for himself, and the people a calf and a lamb for their burnt offering (Leviticus 9:2–3); each prince now brings a full grown bullock.

At the first service of the priests on the eighth day of their ordination, the people’s sin offering was likewise a kid of the goats (Leviticus 9:3, 15). The princes follow a pattern already set.

The blood of a peace offering was dashed against the sides of the altar (Leviticus 3:2). Each prince’s seventeen animals sent their blood onto the altar in its first days of use.

Benjamin completes the western camp on the ninth day, and all Rachel’s descendants have now given. Jacob’s youngest son offers before three older brothers, Dan, Asher and Naphtali.

Each prince gives two hundred shekels of silver, four times the fifty shekels at which a grown man was valued for a vow in Leviticus 27:3.

Revelation 5:8 pictures the elders holding “golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints”. The gold vessel full of incense stands behind that image.

Isaac’s question on Moriah, “where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Genesis 22:7), uses the same pairing of lamb and burnt offering. There a ram was provided in the end; here both lamb and ram are brought.

Where the kid is offered for sin, the blood of a ruler’s sin offering is put on the horns of the altar of burnt offering (Leviticus 4:25). The corners of the new altar would have borne these marks within days of its anointing.

Leviticus 7:20 cuts off anyone who ate peace offering meat while unclean. The exclusions of 5:2 applied at every one of these feasts.

Dan opens the northern camp on the tenth day. The tribe that gave to this altar later set up its own graven image and priesthood (Judges 18:30), and Dan became a site for one of Jeroboam’s golden calves (1 Kings 12:29).

Inside the tent the furnishings were gold; out in the court the hooks and fillets of the pillars were silver (Exodus 27:10). The princes’ silver dishes, made for the outer altar, seem to follow that division, though the text does not draw it.

Kappot were also made for the table of showbread (Exodus 25:29, 37:16), translated there too as “spoons”. The table’s own set was of pure gold, made by Bezalel.

The ashes of the burnt offerings were carried out of the camp to a clean place (Leviticus 6:11). By the tenth day there were many loads of them.

When Hezekiah rededicated the temple after years of neglect, he brought seven he goats for a sin offering “for the kingdom, and for the sanctuary, and for Judah” (2 Chronicles 29:21). Dedication and purification went together then as here.

The goat appears twice in each gift with different words: a young kid (se’ir) for the sin offering, and grown bucks (attudim) for the peace offering. The same species serves two purposes on the same day.

“On the eleventh day” uses ashtei asar for eleven, a rare form of the numeral, instead of the usual achad asar. It appears in only a few places, including Deuteronomy 1:3.

Jewish communities read this chapter aloud during Hanukkah, one prince each day of the festival. The silver dish and bowl of Asher’s prince are recited in the same words as Judah’s.

The ten shekels of gold in each pan are a modest weight. Achan’s stolen wedge of gold at Jericho weighed fifty shekels (Joshua 7:21).

The Passover lamb was also to be “of the first year” (Exodus 12:5). The Passover of 9:1–5 was only days away when these lambs were offered.

Chatta’t, sin offering, is the same Hebrew word as sin. The language uses one term for the wrong and for the sacrifice that deals with it.

“Sacrifice” here is zevach, the word for an animal slaughtered for a meal. The olah went up in smoke; the zevach was killed and eaten.

Naphtali closes the twelve days. If the tabernacle was raised on the first day of the first month, the gifts ended on the twelfth, two days before Passover on the fourteenth (9:3).

The quantity of flour and oil in the dishes is never given, only that both were full. The jealousy offering of 5:15 measured its barley exactly; here the measure is the vessel.

The incense was a fixed recipe of stacte, onycha, galbanum and frankincense, salted and pure (Exodus 30:34–35). Making it for private use was forbidden (Exodus 30:37–38).

The burnt offering was flayed, cut in pieces, and its inner parts and legs washed before burning (Leviticus 1:6–9). Twelve days of such offerings meant the priests’ work at the altar never stopped.

Hebrews 10:4 says, “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins”. The letter reads offerings like this one as pointing beyond themselves.

The last closing formula of the twelve. With “this was the offering of Ahira the son of Enan”, the named gifts end and the arithmetic begins.

“In the day when it was anointed” covers all twelve days: “day” here means the occasion, not a single sunrise to sunset. The sum begins with the vessels, twelve of each.

2,400 shekels of silver, twelve times two hundred. The total gives both items together, charger and bowl, as a single weight of silver.

120 shekels of gold, just over a kilogram and a third. The ten-shekel weight of each pan is restated, so a reader can check the sum.

The burnt offerings total thirty-six animals, and twelve goats for sin. The total adds “with their meat offering”, grain offerings that none of the twelve entries mentions. When the exiles dedicated the rebuilt temple, they offered “twelve he goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel” (Ezra 6:17).

The peace offerings come to 204 animals, and the whole gift to 252. The chapter now says “after that it was anointed” where verse 84 said “in the day”: the dedication ran on after the anointing itself was over.

“The voice of one speaking” uses a reflexive form, middabber, which may mean the voice was speaking as though to itself and Moses heard it. Exodus 25:22 had promised, “there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat.” This is the promise kept.