The table below presents an aligned extract of verses or verselets in Nu29-19, Nu29-28, Nu29-31. Both verses/verselets discuss the offering festival libations. The alignment justifies the Rashi comment that: The verses speak about its libation, its libations, and their libations. There were in fact multiple libations: There was the traditional oil-wine-flour libation. There was also an additional libation - the water libation.

Verse	Text of Verse	Rashi comment
Nu29-28, Nu29-31	And one goat for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, and its meal offering, and its drink offering... And one goat for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, its meal offering, and its drink offerings.	The verses speak about its libation, its libations, and their libations. There were in fact multiple libations: There was the traditional oil-wine-flour libation. There was also an additional libation - the water libation.
Nu29-19	And one kid of the goats for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, and its meal offering, and their drink offerings.

Advanced Rashi: We make four important comments:
1. The above explanation, based on the grammatical plural vs singular, is due to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
2. We have only aligned three verses. There are actually six verses Nu29-34,31,28,25,22,19,16, involved but the above 3 are typical.
3. Rashi notes further plural-singular alignments. Rashi only notes 3 such alignments which mnemonically form the 3 letters that spell the Hebrew word for water. However there are at least 6 such alignments in this chapter. We therefore feel that the three alignments brought by Rashi are a punchy form by which to express the idea. However the real substantive explanation is given - not by three letters spelling a word - but rather by the singular-plural alignments. The other half dozen alignments have other purposes which Rashi does not go into.
4. This Rashi with its surface emphasis on three letters and a pun appears homiletic. By contrast the grammatical explanation offered by Rabbi Hirsch is deep, principle-based, and grammatical. Such a contrast urges and inspires us to read Rashi with care and always seek simple grammatical defenses.

Praise be Him who chose them and their learning.

Note that this Rashi also deals with certain symbolic issues. We therefore regard this Rashi comment as a multiple Rashi comment and will deal with the other Rashi comments in future issues.