Tafsiran Bilangan 7:85: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi & Siftei Chakhamim

“Total silver of vessels” [7:85]. Rashi asks a question here. Why does the Torah have to write again separately what the vessels weighed all together? The explanation is that it wants to show that even though each chieftain separately weighed and watched his bow, basin and ladle. When they weighed the bowls, basins, and ladles again together, they all weighed the same and not even a little weight was missing, but was equal. This was a novelty. When one first weighs many pounds, each pound separately, and afterwards when one weighs the same weight together, it weighs less. However, with the vessels of the chieftains, there was no loss when they were all weighed together.⁵⁸Rashi, Numbers, 7:85.

שלשים ומאה הקערה אחת וגו׳ EACH CHARGER OF SILVER WEIGHING AN HUNDRED AND THIRTY SHEKELS etc. — Why is this stated at all since it has already been staled several times? But because it has only been said “the weight thereof was 130 shekels”, but it does not explain according to which shekel this is reckoned, it (Scripture) therefore repeats it (the number of shekels) here and then makes a general statement with regard to all of them: “all the silver of the vessels was [two thousand and four hundred shekels] after the shekels of the Sanctuary”.

By which shekel standard. Meaning that if not for this verse one would have said that the “holy shekel” written regarding the bowl referred to it alone. Therefore it wrote “one hundred thirty [shekolim was the weight of] each tray…”

כל כסף הכלים ALL THE SILVER OF THE VESSELS [WAS TWO THOUSAND AND FOUR HUNDRED SHEKELS etc.] — By giving the sum total of the shekels it teaches you that the vessels of the Sanctuary had their weight exact (thus e.g. a bowl of 70 shekels was exactly 70, neither more nor less) — whether one weighed them each separately or whether one weighed them all together he got neither more nor less than it should have been ( Sifrei Bamidbar 54).