Leviticus 16:27

Summary

Leviticus 16:27 describes the disposal of the bull and goat used as sin offerings on the Day of Atonement, whose blood had been brought into the sanctuary for atonement. The remains — hides, flesh, and offal — are to be taken outside the camp and burned.

Key words

• cha.Tat ("sin offering", H2403H) — appears twice, each time governed by a construct noun (par, "bull of," H6499; se.'ir, "male goat of," H8163B), forming the phrases "bull of the sin offering" and "goat of the sin offering."
• hu.Va' ("it was brought", H0935P) — hophal (causative passive) perfect, indicating a completed action performed upon the blood by an unnamed agent: the blood "was brought" into the holy place.
• kha.Per ("make atonement", H3722A) — piel infinitive, expressing purpose ("in order to atone"), intensifying the verbal action associated with the blood's use.
• yo.Tzi' ("someone will bring out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, third person singular, denoting a future/ongoing causative action: someone causes the carcasses to go out.
• sa.re.Fu ("people will burn", H8313) — qal sequential perfect, third person plural, continuing the narrative sequence begun by yo.Tzi', shifting to a plural, unspecified subject ("they will burn").

What the text says

The verse opens with two direct objects marked by 'Et (H0853, untranslated object marker) — "the bull of the sin offering" and "the goat of the sin offering" — both placed before the verb that governs them, a common feature of Biblical Hebrew word order for emphasis on the object. A relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("which", H0834A) modifies these animals, specifying that their blood (da.Ma, "blood of," H1818, with third-person plural suffix "their") was the object of the hophal verb hu.Va', "it was brought." The purpose of this bringing is expressed by the piel infinitive kha.Per, "to make atonement," followed by the location ba-Ko.desh, "in the holy place."

The main clause verb, yo.Tzi' (hiphil imperfect, "he/someone will bring out"), has no explicit subject in the Hebrew, leaving the agent unspecified — grammatically it could refer to an unnamed individual responsible for the task. This verb governs the movement "to outside the camp" ('el mi-Chutz la-machaneh). The narrative then continues with the vav-conjunctive sequential perfect sa.re.Fu, "they will burn," shifting to a plural verb, describing the burning of three items — hides, flesh, and offal — each introduced by its own 'Et marker and each bearing the third-person plural suffix "their."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew ba-Ko.desh ("in the holy place," H6944J) is rendered by the BSB as "the Most Holy Place," a more specific designation not distinguished in the base Hebrous noun itself, which simply reads "the holy place." The LXX matches the Hebrew's ambiguity of agent for yo.Tzi' by using a plural verb (ἐξοίσουσιν, "they will bring out"), while the Hebrew verb yo.Tzi' is singular. The Vulgate similarly uses a plural, "asportabunt" ("they will carry away"), diverging from the singular verbal form in the Hebrew text.