Leviticus 15:30

Summary

The verse describes the priest's ritual action: he offers one bird as a chattat ("sin offering") and the other as an olah ("burnt offering"), then performs kipper ("atonement") for the woman before Yehovah on account of her discharge of uncleanness.

Key words

• 'a.Sah ("he will offer/do", H6213A) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun in the preceding verses; the priest is the grammatical subject.
• cha.Tat ("a sin offering", H2403H) — feminine singular noun, functioning as a predicate designation for one of the two birds (ha'echad, "the one").
• khi.Per ("he will make atonement", H3722A) — piel (intensive stem) sequential perfect; the piel form marks the verb as denoting a completed ritual action rather than a simple occurrence.
• li.f.Nei ("before", from H9005 + H6440G) — construct form of "face," here forming the fixed liturgical expression "before Yehovah," locating the act in the divine presence rather than a specific object.
• mi.Zov tum.'a.Tah ("from the discharge of her uncleanness", H2101 + H2932 + H9024) — a construct chain (zov construct with tum'ah plus 3rd feminine singular suffix) meaning literally "discharge of her uncleanness," specifying the cause of the atonement.

What the text says

The verse is built on two sequential perfect verbs joined by the narrative ve- (H9001): 'a.Sah ("he will offer") and khi.Per ("he will make atonement"). Both continue the action sequence of the surrounding legal text, describing what the priest does after receiving the birds. The object clause "et-ha'echad chattat ve-et-ha'echad olah" uses the numeral 'e.Chad ("one," H0259) twice, each marked by the direct object marker 'et (H0853), to distinguish the two birds by their distinct ritual functions — one becomes a chattat, the other an olah — without naming the species again, since it was given earlier in the passage.

The second clause introduces khi.Per in the piel stem, a verb whose root sense in the qal is often "to cover," and here denotes the priest's ritual action toward the woman, marked by the preposition 'al with 3rd feminine singular suffix ('aleiha, "on/for her," H5921A + H9034). The phrase lifnei Yehovah (H9005+H6440G+H3068G) situates the action spatially/liturgically "before Yehovah." The final construct chain mizzov tum'atah ("from the discharge of her uncleanness") specifies the condition prompting the whole ritual, using zov (H2101) in construct with tum'ah (H2932) plus the pronominal suffix -ah ("her," H9024), tying the entire verse back to the discharge situation described earlier in the chapter.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders khi.Per ("he will make atonement") with περὶ αὐτῆς... ("concerning her..."), omitting an explicit verb of atonement in this clause and instead relying on the earlier ποιήσει ("he will do/make") to govern the sentence, producing a more compressed syntax than the Hebrew's two distinct sequential verbs. The Vulgate uses rogabit ("he will ask/entreat") for khi.Per, a translation choice that frames the priestly action as petitionary rather than using a term tied to "covering," as the Hebrew root suggests.