Numerals come in two kinds, cardinal and ordinal. Biblical Hebrew (BH) has a syntactic mechanism for generating a cardinal numeral of any size, while the ordinal paradigm only goes up to tenth. Higher ordinals are expressed in BH by means of a variety of syntactic constructions involving cardinals; some of these are also used to express lower ordinal numbers as well. These special constructions are only found in measure expressions relating to the temporal realm. This paper presents a comprehensive synchronic and diachronic analysis of the four main cardinal constructions expressing ordinality in BH: šənaṯ X šana (lit. ‘the year of X years’); X šana (lit. ‘X years’); šənaṯ X (lit. ‘the year of X), and the bare cardinal (lit. ‘X’). By tracing the distribution of these constructions over three historical stages within the biblical period (classical, transitional and late), the paper sheds light on the synchronic analysis of each construction as well as its historical origin. It will be shown that with the exception of a specialized context in the book of Kings, ordinality in the classical period is mostly uniform, with morphological ordinals expressing lower numerals and the X šana construction expressing higher numerals; days of the month, however, both lower and higher than ten, can alternatively be expressed by a bare numeral. In LBH the šənaṯ X construction, seen earlier only in the aforementioned specialized context in Kings, effectively replaces the X šana construction. The new construction, which unlike classical X šana can be used for either lower or higher numerals, introduces a much greater degree of synchronic variation into the expression of dates, leading to a highly complex system that is only simplified in the post-biblical period. The surviving constructions have non-suppletive paradigms which produce uniform calendrical dates for numerals of all sizes.