Leviticus 10:15

Summary

The verse specifies which portions of the sacrifice — the thigh of the contribution and the breast of the wave-offering, together with the fat portions — are to be brought and waved before Yehovah. It concludes that this allocation becomes a permanent statutory portion for Aaron and his sons, in accordance with Yehovah's command.

Key words

• techrumah ("contribution", H8641) — feminine singular noun in construct with shok ("thigh"), naming the type of offering the thigh belongs to.
• tenufah ("wave-offering", H8573) — appears twice: first in construct with chazeh ("breast"), then independently as the object of the infinitive lehanif ("to wave", H5130B), emphasizing the ritual gesture of waving.
• yavi'u ("they will bring", H0935P) — hiphil imperfect, third person plural; the causative stem marks this as an act of presenting/bringing something before someone, and the imperfect indicates an ongoing or repeated ritual duty rather than a single past event.
• chok-olam ("a prescribed portion of perpetuity", H2706H + H5769G) — construct chain meaning a permanent statutory share, marking the outcome as a fixed legal allotment, not a one-time gift.
• tzivvah ("he has commanded", H6680) — piel perfect, intensive stem, third person masculine singular, referring back to a completed divine command that grounds the instruction.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with two construct chains — shok hatterumah ("the thigh of the contribution") and chazeh hattenufah ("the breast of the wave-offering") — placed as the compound object of the verb yavi'u ("they will bring"), which appears only near the end of the clause. This syntactic distance between the objects and their verb is a normal feature of Biblical Hebrew word order, but it means the reader must hold both offering-parts in mind before learning what is done with them. The purpose clause lehanif tenufah lifnei Yehovah ("to wave a wave-offering before Yehovah") uses the infinitive construct with le- to express intended result, and the repetition of the root nuf ("to wave") in both a noun (tenufah) and the infinitive verb (hanif) creates a figura etymologica, reinforcing the ritual action of waving rather than merely naming it.

The second half of the verse shifts from ritual instruction to legal status through the sequential perfect hayah ("it will belong"), continuing the narrative flow begun by the vav. The phrase lechok-olam ("as a prescribed portion of perpetuity") uses a construct chain to state that this allocation is not incidental but a fixed rule, extended to "you and your sons with you" through the pronominal suffixes attached to le- and itcha.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds "καὶ ταῖς θυγατράσιν σου" ("and your daughters"), a phrase absent from the Hebrew, which mentions only banekha ("your sons", H1121A). The LXX also adds "τῷ Μωυσῇ" ("to Moses") at the close, specifying the recipient of Yehovah's command, where the Hebrew simply states ka'asher tzivvah Yehovah ("as Yehovah commanded") without naming an addressee. The Vulgate restructures the verse with the causal connector "eo quod" ("because"), linking it more explicitly to the preceding verse's reasoning, a syntactic framing not present in the Hebrew's paratactic vav-chain structure.