Exodus 29:27

Summary

The verse instructs the consecration of two specific parts of the ram of ordination — the breast that was waved and the thigh that was raised — designating them as the portion belonging to Aaron and his sons. The Hebrew marks these actions with passive verb forms indicating a ritual already performed on the animal.

Key words

• ki.dash.Ta ("you will consecrate", H6942G) — piel verb, sequential perfect, second person masculine singular; the piel stem gives an intensive/causative nuance ("make holy"), and the sequential perfect links this act to the preceding instructions in the ritual sequence.
• chazeh ("breast of", H2373) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be joined to the following word (ha-tenufah) to form "the breast of the wave-offering."
• hunaf ("it was waved", H5130B) — hophal (causative-passive) perfect, third person masculine singular; the passive form shows the action was done to the breast by someone else, without naming the agent.
• huram ("it was raised", H7311A) — hophal perfect, parallel in form to hunaf, describing the thigh as having been lifted through a distinct ritual gesture.
• milu'im ("installation offerings", H4394) — masculine plural noun, part of the construct phrase "ram of the milu'im," identifying the specific sacrificial animal from which these portions come.

What the text says

The sentence is built on two parallel construct chains — chazeh ha-tenufah ("breast of the wave-offering") and shoq ha-terumah ("thigh of the contribution") — each followed by a relative clause using asher ("which") plus a hophal passive verb (hunaf, huram). This grammatical pairing distinguishes two separate ritual actions performed on two separate cuts of meat: one part was "waved" (a horizontal or back-and-forth motion implied by the root of tenufah), the other was "raised" or "lifted" (implied by the root of terumah). Because both verbs are hophal (passive causative), the text does not specify who performed the waving or raising — the focus is on the resulting state of the meat, not the officiant.

The final clause, me'asher le'Aharon u-me'asher le-vanav ("from that which belongs to Aaron and from that which belongs to his sons"), uses the preposition le ("to/for") twice with asher ("which") to mark possession or entitlement, showing that these consecrated portions are assigned as a share for Aaron and his sons from the ram of the milu'im.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chazeh ha-tenufah and shoq ha-terumah using ἀφόρισμα ("a thing set apart") and ἀφαίρεμα ("a thing taken away") rather than distinct "wave" and "raise" terminology, and it uses the single verb ἀφορίζω/ἀφαιρέω for both hunaf and huram, where the Hebrew employs two different roots (nuf and rum). The Vulgate text given renders only "pectusculum consecratum... armum quem de ariete separasti," compressing the two relative clauses into one and omitting the closing phrase found in the Hebrew that explicitly assigns these portions "to Aaron and to his sons" (le'Aharon... le-vanav).