Leviticus 12:8

Summary

The verse describes the alternative offering for a woman who cannot afford a lamb after childbirth: two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one as a burnt offering and one as a sin offering. The priest performs the atonement rite on her behalf, after which she is declared pure.

Key words

• tim.Tza' ("it will find", H4672) — qal imperfect, third person feminine, referring to "her hand"; part of the idiom for financial capability.
• dei ("sufficiency of", H1767) — construct noun linking to seh, forming the phrase "enough for a sheep."
• la.ke.Chah ("she will take", H3947) — sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), continuing the narrative chain begun by the conditional clause.
• khi.Per ("he will make atonement", H3722) — piel stem, an intensive/factitive verbal pattern, denoting the priest's ritual action.
• ta.He.rah ("she will be pure", H2891) — qal sequential perfect, marking the final state resulting from the ritual sequence.

What the text says

The verse opens with a conditional construction: ve'im lo' timtza' yadah dei seh — literally "and if her hand does not find sufficiency of a sheep." This is an idiomatic expression using yad ("hand") to denote means or capability, with dei ("sufficiency of") in construct governing seh ("a sheep"). The grammar thus expresses economic incapacity through a bodily metaphor rather than a direct statement like "if she is poor."

Following the conditional clause, the text shifts into a chain of sequential perfects (ve-consecutive forms): laqechah ("she will take"), kipper ("he will make atonement"), and tahera ("she will be pure"). This grammatical pattern links the actions as a continuous narrative sequence — the taking of birds, the priest's atoning act, and the resulting purity — each verb building on the prior one rather than standing as an isolated statement. The verb kipper is in the piel stem, the intensive verbal pattern, which in ritual contexts denotes performing the act of atonement/covering as a specific priestly function.

The offering formula itself uses paired construct numerals: shtei torim ("two of turtledoves") or shnei benei yonah ("two of young ones of a dove"), followed by echad le'olah ve'echad lechatat ("one for a burnt offering and one for a sin offering") — a distributive structure assigning each bird a distinct ritual function.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew seh (H7716) is a generic term that can denote a sheep or goat. Both the LXX (ἀμνόν, "lamb") and the Vulgate (agnum, "lamb") render this with a more specific term restricted to a lamb, narrowing the semantic range found in the Hebrew construct phrase dei seh.