🔢WEB · Numbers 7:87
What does Numbers 7:87 mean?
"all the cattle for the burnt offering twelve bulls, the rams twelve, the male lambs a year old twelve, and their meal offering; and the male goats for a sin offering twelve;"
— Numbers 7:87 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
This was the dedication of the altar, on the day when it was anointed, by the princes of Israel: twelve silver platters, twelve silver bowls, twelve golden ladles;
each silver platter weighing one hundred thirty shekels, and each bowl seventy; all the silver of the vessels two thousand four hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary;
the twelve golden ladles, full of incense, weighing ten shekels apiece, after the shekel of the sanctuary; all the gold of the ladles weighed one hundred twenty shekels;
all the cattle for the burnt offering twelve bulls, the rams twelve, the male lambs a year old twelve, and their meal offering; and the male goats for a sin offering twelve;
and all the cattle for the sacrifice of peace offerings twenty-four bulls, the rams sixty, the male goats sixty, the male lambs a year old sixty. This was the dedication of the altar, after it was anointed.
When Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Yahweh, he heard his voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the Testimony, from between the two cherubim: and he spoke to him.
Explanation
Numbers 7:87 is a summary verse that totals up the offerings brought by the leaders of Israel's twelve tribes at the dedication of the altar in the newly completed tabernacle. In plain language, it says that altogether twelve bulls, twelve rams, and twelve year-old male lambs were offered as burnt offerings (along with the grain offerings that accompanied them), and twelve male goats were offered as sin offerings. The number twelve appears throughout because each of the twelve tribal leaders brought an identical set of offerings on his own appointed day, and this verse simply adds up the totals for these specific categories.
The context is found in Numbers chapter 7, which describes the dedication of the altar shortly after the tabernacle was set up in the wilderness (as recorded in Exodus 40). Moses, traditionally credited as the author of Numbers, records that on twelve consecutive days, one leader from each tribe presented an offering to the Lord. Chapters 7 records each leader's identical gift in painstaking, repetitive detail — silver plates, bowls, a golden dish, and the animals for various sacrifices — before providing this summary tally at the end. The original audience was the community of Israel, newly organized
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