The Offerings of Numbers 28 and 29

Think of the kitchen of a busy restaurant. On the wall by the door hangs a sheet of paper that the cooks read before they read anything else. It tells them how much flour and how much wine an ordinary weekday needs, how much more a Friday night needs, and how much a holiday weekend needs, in a long column of figures. The diners never see that sheet, yet without it nothing on the menu would ever reach a table.

Leviticus 23, as we saw in the last chapter, is the calendar of the LORD’s appointed times. Numbers 28 and 29 are the sheet on the kitchen wall. Leviticus tells Israel when to come, and Numbers tells the priests what to lay on the altar when they do. The passage opens with God claiming every offering as His own:

Numbers 28:1-2 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: "Command (tzivvah צָוָה tsaw-vaw') the sons of Israel, and you shall say to them: My offering, my bread for my fire-offerings, my aroma of soothing, you shall take heed to offer to me in its appointed time (moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade').

He speaks of “My offering, my bread,” to be brought “in its appointed time (moed).” The same word that named the feasts in Leviticus 23 now names the moment each offering is due. These two chapters, then, are not a separate subject. They are the feasts seen from the altar.

Four Kinds of Offering

Everything in Numbers 28 and 29 is built from four kinds of offering. Once these four are clear, the rest of the two chapters reads like a chart.

At the center stands the burnt offering, the olah (עֹלָה). Its name comes from the Hebrew verb for going up, because the whole animal goes up in smoke. A grain offering and a drink offering go with every burnt-offering animal, much as bread and wine are set beside the main dish at a meal. At the feasts a single goat is added as a sin offering, “to make atonement for you.”

The Fire That Never Goes Out

Before any feast appears, the chapter lays down a baseline:

Numbers 28:3-4 And you shall say to them: This is the fire-offering which you shall bring to the LORD: lambs, sons of a year, without blemish, two for the day, a continual burnt-offering. The one lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the second lamb you shall offer between the evenings;

The command is “two for the day, a continual burnt-offering”: one lamb in the morning and one “between the evenings,” every day of the year, without a break. The Hebrew word for continual is tamid תָּמִיד taw-meed', and it is the heartbeat of the altar.

Now see what happens when the Sabbath arrives:

Numbers 28:9-10 And on the day of the Shabbat, two lambs, sons of a year, without blemish, and two tenths of fine flour for a grain-offering, mingled with oil, and its drink-offering; the burnt-offering of Shabbat on its Shabbat, beside the continual burnt-offering, and its drink-offering.

Two more lambs are brought, “beside the continual burnt-offering.” That small word “beside” is the key to both chapters. The Sabbath offering does not replace the daily one; it is added to it. So are the new moon and every feast that follows, and again and again the text says “beside the continual burnt-offering.” In these two chapters nothing God appoints pushes out what He appointed before. Each layer is added to the one beneath it.

The Measure for Each Animal

How much grain and how much wine went with each animal? Numbers spells it out in full at the new moon, and it repeats the measures of flour at each feast through the first day of Sukkot:

Numbers 28:11-14 And in the heads of your months you shall bring a burnt-offering to the LORD: two bulls, sons of the herd, and one ram, seven lambs, sons of a year, without blemish; and three tenths of fine flour for a grain-offering, mingled with oil, for the one bull; and two tenths of fine flour for a grain-offering, mingled with oil, for the one ram; and a tenth, a tenth, of fine flour for a grain-offering, mingled with oil, for the one lamb; a burnt-offering, an aroma of soothing, a fire-offering to the LORD. And their drink-offerings shall be half a hin for the bull, and a third of a hin for the ram, and a fourth of a hin for the lamb, wine. This is the burnt-offering of a month in its month, for the months of the year.

Set out as a table, the measures look like this:

The goat of the sin offering has no grain or drink offering with it; it is offered alone.

This is why, from the second day of Sukkot onward, the text no longer gives the measures and says only that the grain and the drink offerings are brought “by their number, according to the judgment (mishpat מִשׁפָּט mish-pawt').” The rule has already been given. Once the animals are counted and the measures applied, the grain and the drink for the day follow from them.

Take the new moon as an example. There are two bulls, one ram, and seven lambs. The flour comes to six tenths, plus two tenths, plus seven tenths, which is one and a half ephahs. The wine comes to one hin for the bulls, a third of a hin for the ram, and a fourth for each of the seven lambs, a little over three hin in all. Then the two lambs of the continual offering are added on top. Every one of these portions had to be measured, mixed, and brought in the right order and at the right hour.

The Whole Year on One Page

The table below sets every appointed time in Numbers 28 and 29 side by side. The numbers count the burnt-offering animals, with the goat of the sin offering in its own column. Everything after the first line is added beside the continual offering.

The Passover itself, on the fourteenth of the first month, is named in Numbers 28:16, but these two chapters list no altar portion for it. The list for the spring begins with the seven days of Unleavened Bread.

Two rows are easy to misread. The day of a blast and the Day of Atonement each have one bull, not two. The first of these falls on the first of the seventh month, which is also a new moon. The text shows how the offerings of that day are stacked:

Numbers 29:6 beside the burnt-offering of the month and its grain-offering, and the continual burnt-offering and its grain-offering, and their drink-offerings, according to their judgment (mishpat), for an aroma of soothing, a fire-offering to the LORD.

The offering is brought “beside the burnt-offering of the month … and the continual burnt-offering.” On that one morning, then, the altar received the offering of the day of a blast, the offering of the new moon, and the two daily lambs all together, which comes to three bulls, two rams, sixteen lambs, and two goats. On the Day of Atonement as well, the goat of Numbers 29 is brought “beside the sin-offering of the atonements,” the rite described in Leviticus 16.

The Countdown

Then comes the autumn, and the chart does something it does nowhere else:

Numbers 29:12-13 And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month a holy convocation (miqra-qodesh מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ mik-raw') shall be to you; all work of service (avodah עֲבֹדָה ab-o-daw') you shall not do; and you shall celebrate a feast (chag חַג khag) to the LORD seven days. And you shall bring a burnt-offering, a fire-offering, an aroma of soothing to the LORD: thirteen bulls, sons of the herd, two rams, fourteen lambs, sons of a year; they shall be without blemish;

On the first day of Sukkot there are thirteen bulls. On the second there are twelve, and then eleven, ten, nine, and eight, until the seventh day:

Numbers 29:32 And on the seventh day, seven bulls, two rams, fourteen lambs, sons of a year, without blemish;

On the seventh day there are seven bulls. Added together, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, and seven make seventy bulls in a single week. With them come fourteen rams, ninety-eight lambs, and seven goats. All of it, as the text keeps saying, is “beside the continual burnt-offering,” which adds another fourteen lambs over the week.

Now consider the work from the side of a priest who had to apply those measures. On the first day alone there were thirteen bulls, two rams, sixteen lambs with the two of the daily offering, and a goat: thirty-two animals in a single day. Over the seven days there were two hundred and three, not counting the two lambs of the Sabbath that fell within that week. The flour for those animals came to thirty-five ephahs, and the wine to more than sixty-seven hin. Every bull had to be without blemish, every measure exact, and every portion offered by men who were clean. This was no quiet afternoon of reflection. It was a kitchen that never closed, and its fire was never allowed to go out.

On the eighth day the countdown stops. The solemn assembly returns to the plain pattern of the day of a blast and the Day of Atonement: one bull, one ram, seven lambs, and one goat.

Why Seventy?

Genesis 10 lists the families that came from the sons of Noah after the flood, and it closes with these words:

Genesis 10:32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided in the earth after the flood.

Jewish tradition counts the names of Genesis 10 as seventy, “the seventy nations.” The Talmud draws a direct line from them to Sukkot. In tractate Sukkah 55b, the seventy bulls of the feast are said to correspond to the seventy nations. On this old reading, the priests in Jerusalem were offering for the whole world.

Hold that beside a verse we met in Chapter 37. Of all the appointed times, Sukkot is the one the prophet names for the nations:

Zechariah 14:16 And it shall come to pass, that everyone who is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up year by year to bow down to the King, the LORD of hosts (tzevaot צָבָא tsaw-baw'), and to celebrate the feast (chag) of Booths.

The feast with seventy bulls is the feast the nations will go up to keep.

Beside Your Vows

The two chapters close with one sentence that shows what kind of worship this was:

Numbers 29:39 These you shall offer to the LORD in your appointed times (moadim מוֹעֵד mo-ade'), beside your vows and your freewill-offerings, for your burnt-offerings, and for your grain-offerings, and for your drink-offerings, and for your peace-offerings."

These offerings stand “beside your vows and your freewill-offerings.” A grateful Israelite could bring a peace offering of his own whenever his heart moved him, and that offering was welcome and was his to give. The bulls of Sukkot and the lambs of the tamid, however, were not left to anyone’s mood. They were the offerings of the whole people, brought at the times God had set, whether or not anyone felt devout that morning. The appointed times were never a private pastime. They were the shared rhythm of a nation standing before its God.

Yet Scripture also names a king who wanted the appointed times for himself. He said in his heart that he would sit on “the mountain of appointed time (moed).”