Leviticus 1

## Summary Leviticus 1 records Yahweh's instructions to Moses, spoken from the Tent of Meeting, concerning the *olah* ("burnt offering", H5930A). The chapter details three cases according to the offerer's means: an animal from the herd (bull), one from the flock (sheep or goat), or birds (turtledoves or young pigeons), specifying the ritual actions of slaughtering, blood handling, and burning performed by the offerer and by Aaron's sons the priests. ## Key words - *olah* ("burnt offering", H5930A) — feminine singular noun, likely derived from the root meaning "to go up," referring to the offering that ascends entirely in smoke; it recurs as the technical term for this offering type throughout the chapter. - *qorban* ("present/offering", H7133A) — masculine singular noun, often in construct with a pronominal suffix ("his offering"), designating the object brought near to Yahweh. - *yaqriv* / *hiqriv* ("he will present/bring near", H7126H) — hiphil (causative) imperfect or sequential perfect of the root behind *qorban*; the causative stem frames the offerer's action as "causing [the animal] to draw near" to the altar or to Yahweh. - *samakh* ("he will lean", H5564) — qal sequential perfect describing the hand-leaning gesture on the head of the *olah* (verse 4), linked syntactically to *nirtzah* ("it will be accepted", H7521, niphal) and *le-khapper* ("to make atonement", H3722A, piel infinitive). - *reiach nichoach* ("odor of soothing", H7381 + H5207) — construct phrase repeated at the close of each offering-type's procedure (verses 9, 13, 17), describing the smoke's effect as perceived by Yahweh. ## What the text says The chapter is built on a repeating grammatical pattern: a conditional clause introduced by *'im* ("if", H0518A) sets the category of animal, followed by a chain of sequential perfect verbs (vav + qatal) that narrate the successive priestly actions — slaughtering (*shachat*, H7819A), sprinkling (*zaraq*, H2236), skinning (*hifshit*, H6584), cutting into pieces (*nittach*, H5408), arranging (*'arakh*, H6186A), and causing to go up in smoke (*hiqtir*, H6999A). This chain construction (vav + sequential perfect) is characteristic of legal/procedural Hebrew: each verb depends on the initial conditional and moves the ritual forward step by step without needing separate subordinating markers. The hiphil stem appears repeatedly in verbs describing the offerer's or priest's action of "presenting" (*yaqriv*, *hiqriv*), grammatically marking these as causative acts — the human agent causes the object to approach the altar or the sacred space, rather than the object moving on its own. The direct object marker *'et* (H0853, untranslated) frequently marks the entrails, blood, or wood as grammatical objects of these action verbs, a feature with no equivalent in translation. The threefold structure (herd/flock/birds) is marked by decreasing specificity of ritual detail: the bird section (verses 14–17) omits the hand-leaning gesture (*samakh*) present in the herd section (verse 4), and substitutes *malaq* ("he will nip off", H4454) for *shachat* ("he will cut the throat", H7819A) as the method of killing. ## Differences between versions The LXXSWETE for verse 4 is markedly shorter than the Hebrew (*kai epithēsei tēn peri autou*, "and he will place [that] concerning him"), omitting the explicit mention of the hand on the head of the burnt offering and the phrase about atonement found in the Hebrew *ve-nirtzah lo le-khapper 'alav* ("and it will be accepted for him to make atonement for him"). The Vulgate (VULCLEM) at verse 4 renders this fully, matching the Hebrew's atonement language (*ponetque manum...in expiationem ejus*), where the LXX as given here does not.