Exodus 29:22

Summary

Exodus 29:22 instructs Moses to take specific fat portions and the right thigh from the ram, explicitly identified as eil milu'im ("ram of installation-offerings", H0352A + H4394). The verse lists the fat, fat tail, fat covering the entrails, liver lobe, both kidneys with their fat, and the right thigh — all body parts destined for a particular ritual use tied to the ram's designated function.

Key words

• la.kach.Ta ("you will take", H3947G) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain of instructions begun earlier in the chapter; second-person masculine, addressing Moses directly.
• 'al.Yah ("fat tail", H0451) — feminine singular noun naming a distinct anatomical part, listed separately from the general chelev ("fat", H2459).
• m.kha.Seh ("covers", H3680) — piel participle from the intensive stem, describing the fat as "the one covering" the entrails; the participle form frames this fat as functionally defined by its position, not just by substance.
• yo.Te.ret ("lobe of", H3508) — feminine singular construct noun, grammatically bound to ka.Ved ("liver", H3516) that follows, forming the phrase "lobe of the liver."
• mi.lu.'Im ("installation offerings", H4394) — masculine plural noun in construct with 'eil ("ram of", H0352A), forming the technical designation eil milu'im, "ram of installation-offerings," which the ki ("for/that", H3588A) clause presents as the reason for this specific set of instructions.

What the text says

The verse is built as a single long clause governed by the verb la.kach.Ta ("you will take"), followed by a series of direct objects each marked by 'et (H0853, untranslated object marker) or connected by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002). This repeated use of 'et before nearly every item — the fat, the entrails-covering fat, the liver lobe, the two kidneys, the fat on them, and the right thigh — gives the list a formal, itemized quality in Hebrew that a simple comma-separated translation smooths over.

The construct chains are notable: yo.Te.ret ha.ka.Ved ("lobe of the liver") and sho.k ha.ya.Min ("thigh of the right [side]") both use construct noun forms (H3508, H7785) to bind a body part to its qualifier, a grammatical structure Hebrew uses instead of adjectives in these cases. The final clause, introduced by ki ("for", H3588A), states the reason for this exact selection: eil milu'im hu' ("it is a ram of installation-offerings"), using the construct phrase eil milu'im as a technical label rather than a descriptive phrase, with hu' ("it", H1931) serving as the copula-pronoun closing the sentence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chelev ("fat") generally as στέαρ but does not separately translate 'alyah ("fat tail", H0451) as a distinct term the way the Hebrew and Vulgate (caudam, "tail") do; the Greek text moves directly from "the fat" to "the fat covering the belly," omitting an explicit rendering of the fat tail. The Vulgate renders milu'im as consecrationis ("of consecration"), while the LXX uses τελείωσις ("completion" or "perfection"), and the Hebrew term milu'im (H4394) literally relates to "filling" — three distinct lexical choices for the same technical designation of the ram.