One golden spoon of ten shekels, full of incense:
one golden spoon of ten shekels, full of incense;
one golden spoon of ten shekels , full of perfume;
one cup of ten [shekels] of gold, full of incense;
Numbers — Israel on the move — and Israel on the ground in rebellion. Two censuses bracket thirty-eight wilderness years; God's faithfulness holds where the people's does not.
Voices1
But while this was done in one respect, as subjects offering tribute to their king, it was in another respect, a purely religious act. The vessels offered were for a sacrificial use--the animals brought were clean and fit for sacrifice, both symbolically denoting, that while God was to dwell among them as their Sovereign, they were a holy people, who by this offering dedicated themselves to God.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871reformed
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
