Leviticus 14:12

Summary

The verse describes the priest taking one male lamb and presenting it, together with a measured quantity of oil, as a guilt offering; both items are then waved together as a wave offering before Yehovah. The action is narrated as a sequence of three ritual steps using consecutive verb forms.

Key words

• la.Kach ("he will take", H3947G) — qal sequential perfect; opens the ritual sequence, "the priest will take."
• hik.Riv ("he will present", H7126H) — hiphil sequential perfect; a causative form meaning "to bring near/cause to approach," used for formal presentation of an offering.
• 'a.Sham ("a guilt offering", H0817) — masculine singular noun naming the category of sacrifice the lamb is designated for.
• log ("[the] log of", H3849) — construct noun; a measure-unit term, grammatically bound to "the oil" that follows it.
• he.Nif ("he will wave", H5130B) with te.nu.Fah ("a wave-offering", H8573) — hiphil verb paired with its cognate noun, forming an internal (etymological) figure: "he will wave them, a waving."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence links three consecutive perfect verbs (la.Kach, hik.Riv, he.Nif), each carrying the narrative ve- prefix that continues the sequence of priestly actions: take → present → wave. The direct object of hik.Riv is not only "it" (the lamb, marked by 'et-...'o in position 12-13) but also, via a second object marker in position 17, "the log of the oil" — meaning the oil is grammatically bound to the same presenting action as the lamb, even though the lamb alone is labeled le-'Asham ("for a guilt offering," using the preposition le-, "to/for").

The final clause uses the plural suffix -am ("them," position 24) attached to the object marker before te.nu.Fah, showing that both the lamb and the oil — not the lamb alone — are the items waved together. The cognate construction he.Nif...te.nu.Fah ("he will wave...a waving") reinforces the ritual gesture by repeating the verbal root as a noun, a common Biblical Hebrew way of intensifying or formalizing an action.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate groups the oil with the presentation clause ("offeret eum pro delicto, oleique sextarium"), matching the Hebrew's syntactic linking of oil to hik.Riv. The LXX text given here shows a truncated phrase ("τῆς καὶ τὴν κοτύλην τοῦ ἐλαίου"), lacking a clear equivalent for 'Asham, and renders the divine name as "Κύρου" rather than the standard "Κυρίου." The Vulgate's "sextarium" and LXX's "κοτύλην" both render log as a liquid-measure unit, differing from each other in the specific measure implied.