Leviticus 14:5

Summary

The priest gives a command, and the throat of one of the two birds is cut over a clay vessel containing living (fresh, flowing) water. The Hebrew marks two sequential actions — commanding and slaughtering — both introduced by the narrative vav that continues the ritual sequence begun in the preceding verses.

Key words

• tzivvah ("he will command", H6680) — piel sequential perfect; the priest is grammatical subject, giving an intensive/causative nuance ("he commands/causes to be done") rather than performing the act himself.
• shachat ("someone will cut [the] throat of", H7819A) — qal sequential perfect, 3rd masculine singular, but with no explicit subject stated in the clause; the gloss supplies "someone" because Hebrew leaves the agent unspecified.
• ha'echat ("the one", H0259) — feminine cardinal number with definite article, agreeing with tzippor ("bird", H6833); the article indicates this is "the one" bird out of the pair used in the rite, not merely "a single" bird.
• keli-cheres ("vessel of earthenware", H3627/H2789) — construct chain, "vessel of clay," specifying material.
• mayim chayyim ("living water", H4325G/H2416A) — noun plus adjective, both masculine plural; "living" describes water that flows (as opposed to stagnant), a common Hebrew idiom.

What the text says

The verse contains two verbs in sequential perfect form connected by vav: ve-tzivvah ("and he will command") and ve-shachat ("and [someone] will slaughter"). The first verb has ha-kohen ("the priest", H3548) as its explicit subject. The second verb, shachat, carries no stated subject in the Hebrew clause itself — grammatically it is simply 3rd masculine singular, so the identity of the one who performs the slaughtering is left to context or inference, not explicitly named as the priest.

The spatial description uses two different prepositions: 'el ("into", H0413) links the slaughtering to the keli-cheres ("vessel of earthenware"), while 'al ("over", H5921A) connects that vessel to the mayim chayyim ("living water"). This suggests the clay vessel sits over or contains the flowing water, and the bird's throat is cut so that blood goes into that vessel.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew shachat has an unspecified singular subject. The LXX renders this with σφάξουσιν ("they will slaughter"), an impersonal plural. The Vulgate uses a passive infinitive construction, "immolari jubebit" ("he will order [it] to be immolated"), making the priest the one who commands the passive action. The Spanish RV1909 and SBLIBRE follow this passive/impersonal pattern ("mandará matar", "ordenará que degüellen"), as does the BSB ("shall command that one of the birds be slaughtered"). All these versions resolve the grammatical ambiguity of the unstated subject in the Hebrew verb differently, though none states outright that the priest himself performs the cutting.