Two lambs of the first year, without blemish, one offered in the morning and one between the evenings: that is the whole of the daily offering, and it is the smallest and most consequential fixture in the sanctuary calendar. Each lamb goes up as a burnt offering and is consumed whole, and each is accompanied by a grain offering of fine flour mixed with beaten oil and a libation of wine poured out at the altar. Exodus gives the instruction at the consecration of the priesthood. Numbers repeats it at the head of the calendar of public offerings, before the sabbath, the new moon and the festivals, every one of which is described as an addition to it rather than as an item beside it.
The word tamid means continual or perpetual, and what it describes is not an offering made without pause but one that never lapses. Its practical effect was to bracket the day. The morning lamb was the first thing on the altar and nothing preceded it; the evening lamb was the last and nothing followed it. Every other offering brought by anybody, public or private, obligatory or freely given, was therefore laid on a fire already burning between the two, and the additional offerings of a great festival, however many bulls and rams they ran to, were still additions inside that frame.
The rest of the daily service was organised around the two lambs. The clearing of ashes from the altar, the arrangement of the wood, the trimming of the lamps, the incense on the golden altar, the priestly blessing and the psalm sung by the Levites all had their fixed position relative to them. A visitor to the Temple on an ordinary day, with no festival and no private offering in sight, would have seen the entire apparatus of the place turning on two sheep.