Numbers 29:39
[do, or, offer. in your set feasts.]
It appears from the account in these two chapters, that there were annually offered to God, at the public charge, independently of a prodigious number of voluntary, vow, and trespass offerings, 15 goats, 21 kids, 72 rams, 132 bullocks, and 1,101 lambs. But how little is all this compared with the lambs slain every year at the passover. Cestius, the Roman general, asked the priests how many persons had come to Jerusalem at their annual festivals: the priests, numbering the people by the lambs that had been slain, said, "twenty-five myriads, 5,000, and 600."
vows <05088> [beside your vows.]
Numbers 15:3
make ...................................... create <06213> [will make.]
burnt offering <05930> [a burnt.]
sacrifice <02077> [a sacrifice.]
for discharging <06381> [performing. Heb. separating.]
freewill offering <05071> [or in a free-will.]
feasts <04150> [in your.]
aroma <05207> [a sweet.]
herd <01241> [the herd.]
Under the term {bakar,} are comprehended the ox, heifer, etc; and under {tzon,} are included sheep and goats. The animals enjoined in the Levitical law are the very same which commanded Abraham to offer. (Ge 15:9.) Hence it is evident, that God delivered to the patriarchs an epitome of that law which was afterwards given in detail to Moses, the essence of which consisted in its sacrifices; and these sacrifices were of clean animals, the most perfect, useful, and healthy of all that are brought under the immediate government of man. Gross feeding and ferocious animals were all excluded, as well as all birds of prey.
