Exodus 29:18

Summary

This verse instructs that the entire ram is to be burned on the altar. The Hebrew text names this act with two distinct technical terms — 'olah ("burnt offering") and 'isheh ("fire offering") — each independently affirmed as belonging to YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068G), and qualifies it as a reyach nichoach ("soothing odor").

Key words

• hik.tar.Ta ("you will make smoke", H6999A) — hiphil (causative) form of the root for "smoke/burn," meaning literally "you will cause to go up in smoke"; it is a sequential perfect continuing the narrative chain from the previous verse.
• mizbeicha ("altar", H4196) — bears the directional he (H9011) suffix, marking motion "toward the altar," so the ram is burned in that direction rather than simply "on" it as a static location.
• 'olah ("[is] a burnt offering", H5930A) — feminine singular noun functioning as predicate; it is the term traditionally used for offerings entirely consumed on the altar.
• 'isheh ("a fire offering", H0801) — masculine singular noun, a separate technical designation from 'olah, again used predicatively.
• hu' ("it", H1931) — personal pronoun repeated twice (lines 11 and 19), each time closing a clause of the form "X hu' laYHWH" ("it [is] X to Yehovah").

What the text says

The verse is built from two parallel nominal clauses, each following the pattern [predicate noun] + hu' + laYHWH: first "'olah hu' laYHWH" ("a burnt offering it [is] to Yehovah"), then "reyach nichoach 'isheh... hu'" with laYHWH again attached to 'isheh. This double structure names the same act of burning with two different sacrificial terms — 'olah and 'isheh — each time closing the clause with the pronoun hu', which in Hebrew nominal sentences serves to identify or classify the preceding noun as the subject's category. The repetition of laYHWH ("to Yehovah") after both terms reinforces that both descriptions apply to the same offering, rather than describing two separate events.

The directional he on mizbecha ("towards the altar") shows the object marker phrase kol-ha'ayil ("all of the ram") as the object of hiqtarta, with the ram's destination explicitly marked morphologically rather than through a separate preposition.

Differences between versions

The LXX splits the Hebrew's two parallel hu'-clauses into two grammatically distinct Greek clauses: ὁλοκαύτωμα κυρίῳ ("a whole burnt offering to the lord") for 'olah laYHWH, and separately θυμίαμα κυρίῳ ("incense to the lord") for 'isheh laYHWH — θυμίαμα typically denotes incense, a narrower sense than the Hebrew 'isheh ("fire offering"). The Vulgate renders the second clause as "victimae Domini" ("of the victim of the Lord"), placing it in a genitive relationship to odor suavissimus rather than preserving the Hebrew's repeated independent "to Yehovah" (laYHWH) attached separately to each term.