Leviticus 14:13

Summary

The verse specifies that the guilt offering lamb must be slaughtered at the same location as the sin offering and burnt offering — the sacred area of the sanctuary. It then explains the legal status of this offering: like the sin offering, it belongs to the priest and counts among the most holy things.

Key words

• sha.Chat ("he will cut the throat of", H7819A) — sequential perfect verb form, continuing the narrative sequence of ritual actions begun earlier in the chapter.
• yish.Chat ("someone cuts the throat of", H7819A) — same root as above but in imperfect form, marking a general or habitual action inside a relative clause ("the place where [one] slaughters").
• makom ("place of", H4725) — construct noun appearing twice, linking the act of slaughter to a specific location, first to the sin/burnt offerings, then to "the holy place" (ha-qodesh, H6944G).
• 'asham ("guilt offering", H0817) — the subject of the explanatory clause, compared directly to the chatat ("sin offering", H2403H) via the preposition ka- ("like the", H9004).
• hu' ("it", H1931) — personal pronoun used twice, once mid-verse and once at the very end, framing the identification of the offering both as priestly property and as "holy of holies."

What the text says

The verse divides into two grammatical units. The first uses a sequential perfect, sha.Chat, to continue the ritual instructions, followed by a relative clause built on the imperfect yish.Chat, which describes a repeated or customary action — the place "where one [habitually] slaughters" the sin offering and burnt offering. This shift from perfect to imperfect marks a move from a specific instruction to a general rule about sacrificial location, both converging on bi-mqom ha-qodesh ("in the place of holiness/holy place").

The second unit opens with ki ("for/that", H3588A), introducing a causal or explanatory clause. The comparison ka-chatat ha-'asham hu' ("like the sin offering, the guilt offering — it...") places the guilt offering ('asham) in structural parallel with the sin offering (chatat), both governed by the same rule: they belong to the priest (la-kohen). The sentence closes with the phrase qodesh qadashim hu' ("a holy thing of holy things, it [is]"), where the construct doubling of qodesh intensifies the classification, and the final hu' echoes the earlier pronoun, bracketing the clause with emphatic identification.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the order as τὰ ὁλοκαυτώματα καὶ τὰ περὶ ἁμαρτίας ("the burnt offerings and the sin offerings"), reversing the Hebrew sequence ha-chatat ve-ha-'olah ("the sin offering and the burnt offering"), and uses a plural form (ὁλοκαυτώματα) where the Hebrew 'olah (H5930A) is singular. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew order (pro peccato...et holocaustum). For the closing phrase, the Vulgate condenses the doubled Hebrew construction qodesh qadashim hu' into a single clause, "Sancta sanctorum est," without reproducing the repeated pronoun hu' that frames the Hebrew sentence.