Numbers 28:3–8

28:3–8 Each morning after daybreak and each evening before sunset, a one-year-old lamb was prepared and sacrificed along with one-tenth ephah (about two liters) of finely ground flour and one-fourth hin (about one liter) of olive oil. This offering was one of those originally decreed on Mount Sinai (Exod 20:24; 29:38–43) for the purpose of consecration of the Tent of Meeting and the community that met God there. The more detailed cereal offerings of Num 15:1–21, which have the future life in the land in view, are presumed in this section. The addition of one-fourth hin of strong drink (šēkār, “beer, strong fermented or distilled drink,” or more specifically yayin, “wine” in Exod 29:40) completes the collection of agricultural products that combined to produce a savory smell when consumed by fire. Šēkār derives from the Akkadian šikāru, the common word in Mesopotamia for prominent barley beer. Recently, however, Stager has suggested that šēkār may have actually been a kind of brewed and distilled grape beverage made from a variety of vineyard products.24 Wine and other fermented liquids were considered special gifts from God (or the gods) in the ancient Near East and thus were to be reciprocated in kind as part of the array of sacrifices.25

R. Dennis Cole, Numbers, vol. 3B, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 473.