Leviticus 1:16

Summary

The verse continues the ritual for a bird burnt offering: the officiant removes the bird's craw together with its feathers, then throws this remnant beside the altar, on its east side, in the place designated for the fatty ash.

Key words

• he.Sir ("he will remove", H5493G) — hiphil (causative) verb in sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain of ritual actions; the causative stem marks a deliberate act performed on the bird.
• mur.'a ("craw", H4760) — feminine singular noun in construct state ("craw of"), bound to the pronominal suffix o ("its"), naming the specific organ removed.
• no.tza ("feather[s]", H5133) — feminine singular noun in construct state, bound to h ("its"), joined to the craw by the preposition be. ("with"), indicating the feathers are removed together with the craw.
• hish.Likh ("he will throw", H7993) — hiphil sequential perfect, the second action in the sequence; its object is 'o.Ta ("it/her"), referring back to the craw-with-feathers unit already named.
• Ke.de.ma ("east", H6924B) — noun with directional he suffix ("-ward"), specifying the eastward location relative to the altar where the material is discarded.

What the text says

The verse is built on two sequential hiphil verbs — he.Sir ("he will remove") and hish.Likh ("he will throw") — both continuing the ongoing narrative action begun earlier in the chapter. The first verb governs a compound object: mur.'a ("craw") joined by the preposition be. ("with") to no.tza ("feather[s]"), each noun appearing in construct form with a third-person feminine singular suffix referring to the bird. This grammatical construction presents the craw and its feathers as a single unit removed together in one action.

The second verb, hish.Likh, takes as its object the pronoun 'o.Ta ("it"), which grammatically refers back to that same craw-with-feathers unit rather than naming a separate item. The location of the throwing is specified through a chain of construct and prepositional phrases: 'E.tzel ("beside", construct) + ha.miz.Be.ach ("the altar"), then Ke.de.ma ("eastward", with directional suffix), and finally 'el- me.Kom ha.Da.shen ("to the place of the fatty ash"), a doubly-anchored spatial description — first relative to the altar's east side, then to the specific place already used for the ash of prior offerings.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate structures the object differently: it names vesiculam gutturis ("the little vesicle of the throat") and plumas ("the feathers") as two separate items governed by the single verb proiciet ("he will throw"), whereas the Hebrew presents two sequential actions — removal of the craw-with-feathers, then throwing away that same unit (referenced by a pronoun, not renamed). The LXX's σὺν τοῖς πτεροῖς ("with the feathers") linguistically parallels the Hebrew's be. ("with") construction more closely than the Vulgate's coordinated noun pair.