Leviticus 1:17

Summary

The verse describes the final steps of preparing a bird for the burnt offering: the priest tears the bird by its wings without fully separating it into two pieces, then burns it on the altar. The text closes with a formulaic description identifying it as a burnt offering, a fire offering of soothing odor to Yehovah.

Key words

• shi.Sa' ("he will tear apart", H8156) — piel (intensive) stem sequential perfect, indicating a deliberate, forceful tearing action, more intensive than a simple qal form would convey.
• yav.Dil ("he will separate [it]", H0914) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); the causative form emphasizes that the priest does not cause full separation of the parts.
• hik.Tir ("he will make smoke", H6999A) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect; this root specifically denotes turning the offering into smoke, distinct from ordinary burning vocabulary.
• 'i.Sheh ("a fire offering of", H0801) — construct form, grammatically linking to Rei.ach ("an odor of", H7381) which itself is construct linking to ni.Cho.ach ("soothing", H5207), forming a chain: "a fire-offering of an odor of soothing."
• kh.na.Fa ("wings", H3671) — feminine dual construct, marking the paired wings as the location of the tearing action.

What the text says

The verse opens with two sequential perfect verbs connected by the narrative ve ("and", H9001): shi.Sa' ("he will tear apart", H8156) and later hik.Tir ("he will make smoke", H6999A), both continuing the ritual sequence established in prior verses. The direct object marker 'oT (H0853) with its suffix o ("it", H9033) appears twice, each time referring back to the bird described earlier in the chapter, though the bird itself is not respecified here.

The negated hiphil yav.Dil ("he will separate [it]", H0914) is grammatically distinct from shi.Sa': the tearing action (piel) and the prohibition against full separation (hiphil, negated) work together to specify a partial tearing — the wings are torn but the bird is not divided into two complete parts. The construct chain at the end — 'i.Sheh ("a fire offering of", H0801) governing Rei.ach ("an odor of", H7381) governing ni.Cho.ach ("soothing", H5207) — stacks three nouns into a single compound description, a construction that Hebrew uses to build cumulative qualifying phrases rather than separate adjectives. The final preposition la ("to", H9005) attached to Yehovah (H3068G) marks the offering's recipient.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shi.Sa' ("he will tear apart", H8156) with ἐκκλάσει ("he will break off") and specifies ἐκ τῶν πτερύγων ("from the wings"), while the Hebrew uses the preposition vi ("by", H9003) with kh.na.Fa ("wings", H3671) rather than "from." The Vulgate expands the action into confringetque ascellas ejus... neque ferro dividet eam, adding the detail "with iron" (ferro), which has no corresponding word in the Hebrew or the Greek text.