Leviticus 1:13

Summary

The verse specifies that the entrails and legs of the offering must be washed with water, after which the priest presents the whole animal and burns it on the altar. It closes with the formulaic description of the offering as a olah ("burnt offering", H5930A), an isheh ("fire offering", H0801) with a reiach nichoach ("soothing odor", H7381+H5207) for Yehovah (H3068G).

Key words

• yirchatz ("he will wash", H7364) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular, with no explicit subject stated in the Hebrew clause; the identity of the "he" (worshiper vs. priest) is left implicit by the grammar.
• hikriv ("he will present", H7126H) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by yirchatz; the causative stem marks the priest as the one who causes the offering to draw near.
• hiktir ("he will make [it] smoke", H6999A) — hiphil sequential perfect, parallel in form to hikriv, denoting the causative act of turning the offering into smoke on the altar.
• ha (directional he, H9011) attached to mizbecha ("altar", H4196) — marks direction "toward/to the altar," rather than simple location.
• isheh reiach nichoach — two nouns in construct chains (isheh construct + reiach construct + nichoach), stacking descriptive genitives: "a fire-offering of an odor of soothing," a compact appositional phrase describing the olah.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with the objects ha-kerev ("the entrails", H7130H) and ha-kera'ayim ("the legs", H3767, dual form) placed before the verb yirchatz, giving them fronted emphasis. The verb itself is a third-person singular qal imperfect without a named subject in this clause, so grammatically the actor performing the washing is not specified here — the form only indicates "he will wash." The sentence then shifts into a sequence of hiphil (causative) verbs, hikriv and hiktir, both marked as sequential perfects continuing the narrative flow: the priest (ha-kohen, H3548) is explicitly named as the subject only for these two actions — presenting and causing to go up in smoke. The final segment is a nominal, non-verbal clause: olah hu, "a burnt offering, it [is]," followed by the construct chain isheh reiach nichoach la-Yehovah, which piles up genitive relationships without any verb, functioning as a summary label for the whole ritual just described.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb yirchatz is singular ("he will wash"), leaving the subject unspecified, while the LXX uses plynousin (plural, "they will wash") and the Vulgate uses lavabunt (plural, "they will wash"), both making explicit a plural subject not marked in the Hebrew verb form itself.