Leviticus 1:7

Summary

Leviticus 1:7 instructs that the sons of Aaron the priest will put fire on the altar, and then arrange wood on that fire. The verse describes two sequential ritual actions performed by the priests in preparing the burnt offering.

Key words

• na.te.nu ("they will put", H5414H) — qal sequential perfect; continues a chain of ritual instructions, functioning as a future/prescriptive action following a preceding verb in the passage's sequence.
• bene ("sons of", H1121A) — masculine plural construct noun, linking directly to 'Aharon ("Aaron", H0175) to specify whose sons perform the action.
• ha.Kohen ("the priest", H3548) — masculine singular noun with definite article, in apposition to Aaron, identifying his priestly role.
• 'esh ("fire", H0784) — common gender singular noun, appears twice in the verse (lines 7 and 16), marking both the initial fire placed and the fire onto which wood is later laid.
• 'a.re.Khu ("they will arrange", H6186A) — qal sequential perfect; the second action in the chain, describing the ordered placement of wood.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two sequential perfect verbs — na.te.nu ("they will put") and 'a.re.Khu ("they will arrange") — both governed by the narrative vav (ve, H9001) that chains ritual actions in temporal sequence. The subject of both verbs is bene 'Aharon ha-Kohen ("the sons of Aaron the priest"), a construct chain identifying the agents. The first clause states that fire ('esh) is placed 'al ("on", H5921A) ha-mizbeach ("the altar", H4196). The second clause states that wood ('etzim) is arranged 'al the same fire (ha-'esh), now marked with the definite article since it refers back to the fire just mentioned in the first clause.

The repetition of 'esh — first without the article, then with it (ha-'esh) — marks a shift from introducing the fire as a new element to referring back to it as an established object on the altar. This anaphoric use of the definite article is a feature of the Hebrew text's grammar not immediately visible in translations, which do not distinguish two syntactic states of "fire" in the same way.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) presents the order differently: "subjicient in altari ignem, strue lignorum ante composita" ("they will put fire under on the altar, with a pile of wood already arranged before"), which restructures the sequence compared to the Hebrew's straightforward "put fire... then arrange wood on the fire." The LXX (ἐπιστοιβάσουσιν ξύλα ἐπὶ τὸ πῦρ, "they will pile wood upon the fire") follows the Hebrew's sequential order more closely, matching the two-step action of placing fire first and then wood upon it.