Numbers 29:26–28

Numbers 29:26 — "On the fifth day: nine bulls, two rams, fourteen male lambs a year old without defect"

The fifth day falls precisely in the downward slope of the bull-offering sequence: thirteen (day 1), twelve (day 2), eleven (day 3), ten (day 4), nine (day 5), eight (day 6), seven (day 7) — a total of seventy bulls across the feast. The rabbis later identified these seventy bulls with the seventy nations of the world (Gen 10), understanding Israel's sacrifices as intercessory worship on behalf of all humanity. For the Catholic exegete, this universalist reading prefigures the Church's Eucharistic liturgy, offered not for one people alone but pro multis — for the many. The nine bulls are a reduction from the thirteen of day one, yet the rite loses none of its gravity; each animal is to be without defect (Hebrew: tamim), the same word used for the Passover lamb (Ex 12:5) and applied by the New Testament to Christ himself (1 Pet 1:19: "a lamb without blemish or spot"). The insistence on unblemished animals in every day's offering is not ritual pedantry but a theological declaration: only the morally perfect can truly atone.

The two rams remain constant across all seven days (cf. vv. 13, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32), suggesting a stable, unchanging element within the varying sacrifice. The Fathers noted symbolic resonance with the pair of rams offered by Abraham (Gen 22:13), seeing in the constant rams a type of the Lamb whose sacrifice is eternally present before the Father.

The fourteen yearling lambs likewise remain constant throughout (vv. 13, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32), a figure of remarkable consistency amid the decreasing bull count. Fourteen — twice seven — is a number of completeness doubled, echoing the genealogical structure of Matthew 1:17, where fourteen generations mark each epoch of salvation history.

Numbers 29:27 — "Their meal offering and their drink offerings…according to their number, after the ordinance"

The meal offering (minḥah) and drink offering (nesek) are not afterthoughts but integral components of a total act of worship. Fine flour mixed with oil accompanied the animal sacrifice; wine was poured out at the altar's base. The Church Fathers — particularly Origen in his Homilies on Numbers — read the flour and oil as figures of the Body of Christ (bread) and the Holy Spirit (oil of anointing), and the poured wine as the Blood of the covenant. The phrase "according to their number, after the ordinance" (k'mishpatam) stresses meticulous conformity to divine prescription. Israel does not invent the manner of its worship; it receives it. This principle is foundational to Catholic liturgical theology: the lex orandi is not constructed by the assembly but received from God through the mediation of the Church.

Numbers 29:28 — "One male goat for a sin offering, in addition to the continual burnt offering"

The single goat (śe'îr 'izzim) for a sin offering is constant across every day of the feast (cf. Lev 23:19; Num 29:16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34, 38), a daily acknowledgment that Israel's worship, however magnificent, is accompanied by the persistent reality of sin. The "continual burnt offering" ('ōlat hattāmîd) — the twice-daily lamb prescribed in Num 28:3–8 — undergirds all feasts as their baseline. No festive sacrifice supersedes or cancels the daily offering; all extraordinary worship is built upon the ordinary. In Catholic sacramental life, this mirrors the relationship between the daily Mass and the great liturgical feasts: the ordinary celebration of the Eucharist is not eclipsed by solemnity but is its foundation and constant wellspring.

Typological Sense

The entire seven-day structure, with its descending bull count culminating in the number seven on the last day, moves toward a kind of liturgical kenosis — a diminishment that paradoxically reaches its apex of meaning on the last and greatest day (cf. John 7:37). The Feast of Tabernacles was the feast at which Jesus stood and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink" — directly invoking the water-pouring ceremony (Nisuch HaMayim) of Sukkot. The sacrificial arithmetic of Numbers 29 thus points, through its very structure of reduction and constancy, to the one sacrifice that renders all others complete and unnecessary.

Catholic tradition brings a distinctive hermeneutical lens to this passage through the doctrine of typology — the understanding, articulated in the Catechism (CCC 128–130), that the Old Testament rites are genuine anticipations of the New Covenant's realities, not merely historical curiosities. The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum §16 states: "God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New." The daily sin offering in verse 28 illustrates the Catechism's teaching (CCC 578) that the Law was given as a "pedagogue" leading Israel to recognize both its need for redemption and the inadequacy of animal sacrifice to fully supply it — a theme St. Paul develops in Galatians 3:24 and the Letter to the Hebrews makes explicit (Heb 10:4: "It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins").

St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 102, a. 3) taught that the multiplicity and variety of Old Testament sacrifices were signs of the many perfections united in the one sacrifice of Christ — each animal type (bull, ram, lamb, goat) signifying a different aspect of Christ's saving work: strength, leadership, innocence, and sin-bearing, respectively. The constancy of the lambs and rams across all seven days prefigures the once-for-all (ephapax, Heb 9:12) yet eternally present nature of Christ's sacrifice, perpetually offered in the Eucharist. Pope Benedict XVI, in Sacramentum Caritatis §11, drew precisely this line from Levitical multiplicity to Eucharistic singularity: the Old Testament sacrifices find their unity, their truth, and their completion in the one Bread and one Cup of the New Covenant.

A contemporary Catholic might be tempted to read this passage as merely antiquarian — an inventory of ancient livestock. But the spiritual logic embedded here speaks directly to modern sacramental life. Notice that the sin offering (v. 28) appears on every day of the feast, even the most joyful. Israel is not permitted to celebrate without acknowledging sin — and neither, the Church teaches, should we. The practice of beginning Mass with the Confiteor or Penitential Rite enacts this same wisdom: festivity and contrition are not opposites but companions. Further, the phrase "according to their number, after the ordinance" challenges the contemporary instinct to personalize or improvise worship. The Catholic is called to receive the liturgy as a gift rather than construct it as a project. Finally, the diminishing bulls invite reflection on spiritual detachment: the feast grows in meaning even as the external offering decreases, because the heart's orientation — not the quantity of offering — is what God seeks. Concretely: attend daily Mass during a major feast, begin with a sincere examination of conscience, and bring something costly — time, attention, the surrender of distraction — to the altar each day.