Numbers 18:12-18

18:12 “All the best of the olive oil and all the best of the wine and of the wheat, the first fruits of these things that they give to the Lord, I have given to you. ¹  18:13 And whatever first ripe fruit in their land they bring to the Lord will be yours; everyone who is ceremonially clean in your household may eat of it.

18:14 “Everything devoted ²  in Israel will be yours. 18:15 The firstborn of every womb which they present to the Lord, whether human or animal, will be yours. Nevertheless, the firstborn sons you must redeem, ³  and the firstborn males of unclean animals you must redeem. 18:16 And those that must be redeemed you are to redeem when they are a month old, according to your estimation, for five shekels of silver according to the sanctuary shekel (which is twenty gerahs). 18:17 But you must not redeem the firstborn of a cow or a sheep or a goat; they are holy. You must splash ⁴  their blood on the altar and burn their fat for an offering made by fire for a pleasing aroma to the Lord. 18:18 And their meat will be yours, just as the breast and the right hip of the raised offering is yours.

Numbers 18:27-30

18:27 And your raised offering will be credited ⁵  to you as though it were grain from the threshing floor or as new wine ⁶  from the winepress. 18:28 Thus you are to offer up a raised offering to the Lord of all your tithes which you receive from the Israelites; and you must give the Lord’s raised offering from it to Aaron the priest. 18:29 From all your gifts you must offer up every raised offering due ⁷  the Lord, from all the best of it, and the holiest part of it.’ ⁸ 

18:30 “Therefore you will say to them, ⁹  ‘When you offer up ¹⁰  the best of it, then it will be credited to the Levites as the product of the threshing floor and as the product of the winepress.

---

¹ tn This form may be classified as a perfect of resolve – he has decided to give them to them, even though this is a listing of what they will receive.

² tn The “ban” (חֵרֶם, kherem) in Hebrew describes that which is exclusively the Lord’s, either for his sanctuary use, or for his destruction. It seems to refer to an individual’s devoting something freely to God.

³ tn The construction uses the infinitive absolute and the imperfect tense of the verb “to redeem” in order to stress the point – they were to be redeemed. N. H. Snaith suggests that the verb means to get by payment what was not originally yours, whereas the other root גָאַל (ga’al) means to get back what was originally yours (Leviticus and Numbers [NCB], 268).

⁴ tn Or “throw, toss.”

⁵ tn The verb is חָשַׁב (khashav, “to reckon; to count; to think”); it is the same verb used for “crediting” Abram with righteousness. Here the tithe of the priests will be counted as if it were a regular tithe.

⁶ tn Heb “fullness,” meaning the fullness of the harvest, i.e., a full harvest.

⁷ tn The construction is “every raised offering of the Lord”; the genitive here is probably to be taken as a genitive of worth – the offering that is due the Lord.

⁸ tn Or “its hallowed thing.”

⁹ tn The wording of this verse is confusing; it may be that it is addressed to the priests, telling them how to deal with the offerings of the Levites.

¹⁰ tn The clause begins with the infinitive construct with its preposition and suffixed subject serving to indicate the temporal clause.