Verse 72
On the eleventh day - The Hebrew form of expression, here and in the 78th verse, has something curious in it. יום עשר עשתי ביום beyom ashtey asar yom , In the day, the first and tenth day; יום עשר שנים ביום beyom sheneym asar yom , In the day, two and tenth day. But this is the idiom of the language, and to an original Hebrew our almost anomalous words eleventh and twelfth, by which we translate the original, would appear as strange as his, literally translated, would appear to us. In reckoning after twelve, it is easy to find out the composition of the words thirteen, as three and ten, fourteen, four and ten, and so on; but eleven and twelve bear scarcely any analogy to ten and one, and ten and two, which nevertheless they intend. But this is a subject of philology rather than of Biblical criticism.
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