Numbers28chapter 28

Numbers 28:1-2

This calendar arrives after the second census and after Joshua is set over the congregation in chapter 27, so a nation with no field of its own is handed a schedule of harvest offerings. Barnes reads the scale of the system as pointing past the desert to the settled land, since Deuteronomy 12:8-9 says plainly that Israel had not yet come to the rest. The offerings are called my bread, which Calvin treats as a hard expression given to a people who needed the rite made plain, and Psalm 50:12-13 answers that same figure from God's own side, if I were hungry, I would not tell thee.

Numbers 28:3-8

Verse 6 dates this offering to mount Sinai, where Exodus 29:38-42 had already commanded the two lambs, so the schedule opens by repeating rather than by adding. The word rendered continual is the Hebrew tamid, and it governs the rest of the chapter, because every feast below is measured as something laid on top of it. Verse 7 calls for strong wine poured out in the holy place, and Barnes notes that the term usually names drink other than the grape, with barley drink standing in for wine in the desert. Paul takes up the poured drink offering for himself at Philippians 2:17 and 2 Timothy 4:6.

Numbers 28:9-10

No sabbath burnt offering had been commanded before this verse, a point Barnes and the Jamieson, Fausset and Brown commentary each make. The seventh day is marked by doubling the daily lambs rather than by an offering of another kind, so it carries the same rite at twice the measure. Ezekiel 46:4-5 gives six lambs and a ram for the sabbath in the temple vision, a larger reckoning than this one, and Matthew Henry reads that increase as sabbath keeping enlarged rather than ended.

Numbers 28:11-15

The monthly offering is commanded here for the first time in the law, and it is the largest yet in the chapter, two bullocks, a ram and seven lambs. A kid of the goats for a sin offering comes with it, so atonement is written into the calendar month by month instead of waiting on an occasion of known guilt, which is how Numbers 15:22-26 had treated it. Jewish writers report that the start of a month was fixed by witnesses watching for the first sight of the new moon and by fires lit on the hilltops to carry the word, which is later practice and not anything this chapter states. Colossians 2:16 names the new moon alongside the sabbath and the holyday when it tells the church to let no man judge them in these things.

Numbers 28:16-19

The passover is fixed by date and the feast of unleavened bread runs from the following day for seven days, as Exodus 12:6 and Leviticus 23:5-6 had set them. What this chapter adds is the offering at the altar for those days, which Barnes observes had not been prescribed anywhere before. The household lamb of Exodus 12 goes unmentioned here, since the subject is what the nation brings, and the burnt offering named in verse 19 is the same one the new moon received in verse 11.

Numbers 28:20-25

Verse 24 orders the same offering on each of the seven days, so the week holds its full measure to the end instead of tapering after the opening convocation. The phrase beside the continual burnt offering falls at verses 10, 15, 24 and 31, with verse 23 saying the same thing in other words, and it settles what a feast might otherwise raise, since the daily lambs go on under everything laid over them. A goat for a sin offering stands in the middle of a week of gladness, which Matthew Henry reads as confession keeping company with joy.

Numbers 28:26-31

This feast carries no date in any month. It is placed by counting, after your weeks be out, which Leviticus 23:15-16 measures as fifty days from the sheaf of the wave offering, and it is the one appointment in the chapter fixed by a tally rather than by a day of the month. Acts 2:1 has the disciples together when that counted day was fully come. The chapter closes here, and the offerings of the seventh month, the trumpets, the day of atonement and the booths, are held over to chapter 29.