Leviticus 1:12

Summary

The verse describes the second step in dismantling a burnt offering: the animal is cut into pieces, and the priest arranges the pieces — including the head and the suet — on the wood that lies on the fire on the altar. The Hebrew moves through a sequence of two main verbs (cutting, then arranging) linked by narrative vav.

Key words

• nittach ("he will cut in pieces", H5408) — piel stem, giving an intensive nuance of thorough dismemberment; sequential perfect continuing the ritual chain from the previous verse.
• netachav ("its pieces", H5409) — masculine plural noun in construct with a pronominal suffix, literally "pieces of it," specifying that the cutting yields multiple distinct portions.
• 'arakh ("he will arrange", H6186A) — qal (simple) stem, sequential perfect; contrasts with the intensive nittach, marking a shift from a forceful action (cutting) to an ordering action (laying out).
• hakohen ("the priest", H3548) — definite singular noun, explicitly naming the human agent of the arranging action, distinct from the unnamed subject of the cutting.
• 'asher ("which", H0834A) — relative particle used twice in succession, each time introducing a clause that locates one item relative to another (wood on fire, fire on altar).

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav attached to nittach, continuing directly from the prior clause without a new subject stated — grammatically "he" cuts, the same unspecified agent as before. The object is marked twice: first the animal itself ('oto, "it"), then broken down via the construct noun netachav ("pieces of it"), followed by two more objects joined by ve-: ro'sho ("its head") and pidro ("its suet"), each carrying a third-person suffix referring back to the animal. This creates a list of three items (pieces, head, suet) all governed by the single verb nittach.

The second clause introduces hakohen as an explicit grammatical subject for 'arakh, distinguishing the arranging action as specifically priestly, in contrast to the cutting, whose agent remains unnamed in the Hebrew syntax. The prepositional phrase that follows stacks two relative clauses with 'asher: "the wood that is on the fire" and "the fire that is on the altar," each clause nesting the location of the previous item, producing a chain of spatial specification (pieces → wood → fire → altar).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders both verbs in the third-person plural (διελοῦσιν, "they will divide"; ἐπιστοιβάσουσιν, "they will stack"), and adds "οἱ ἱερεῖς" ("the priests") in the plural where the Hebrew has the singular hakohen. The Vulgate similarly uses plural verbs (dividentque, ponent) without naming a priest at all in this verse, leaving the agent grammatically impersonal.