Leviticus 16:33

Summary

The verse closes the Day of Atonement ritual instructions by stating that the high priest will perform kippur ("atonement") for four objects: the inner sanctuary, the tent of meeting, the altar, and finally the priests together with the assembly. The action is expressed through triple repetition of the same verbal root, distributing the objects across three clauses.

Key words

• khiPer ("he will make atonement for", H3722A) — piel sequential perfect; opens the verse and governs the first two objects (sanctuary, tent of meeting).
• yekhaPer ("he will make atonement for", H3722A) — piel imperfect, repeated twice more; governs first the altar alone, then the priests and assembly together.
• mikDash ("sanctuary of", H4720) — construct form, "sanctuary of [the holiness]", forming a genitive chain with haKodesh.
• haKodesh ("the holiness", H6944G) — definite noun completing the construct chain begun by mikdash, together meaning "the sanctuary of holiness."
• kol-'am haKahal ("all the people of the assembly", H3605/H5971A/H6951) — a double construct chain: kol governs 'am, which itself governs haqahal, stacking three nouns into one phrase.

What the text says

The Hebrew organizes the verse around three occurrences of the root kipper (H3722A), all in the piel stem, which in the biblical text regularly expresses the intensive or effective sense "to make atonement for" rather than a simple action. The first instance, khiPer, is a sequential perfect continuing the narrative chain from the preceding verses; it takes two objects joined by ve- ("and"): mikdash haKodesh and 'Ohel Mo'ed. The verb then shifts to imperfect form, yekhaPer, first governing hamizBeach ("the altar") alone, and a third time governing the phrase introduced by the preposition 'al ("on/for") that covers hakoHanim ("the priests") and kol-'am haKahal ("all the people of the assembly"). This repetition creates a rhythmic three-part structure — sanctuary/tent, altar, priests/people — rather than a single verb governing a long list, giving each set of objects its own explicit act of atonement.

The phrase mikdash haKodesh is a construct chain literally reading "sanctuary of the holiness," while kol-'am haKahal stacks three nouns ("all," "people," "assembly") into one construct sequence, intensifying the totality of who is included in the atonement.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mikdash haKodesh as "τὸ ἅγιον τοῦ ἁγίου" ("the holy of the holy"), a genitive construction paralleling the Hebrew but shifting the head noun from "sanctuary" to "holy," whereas the Vulgate simplifies this to "sanctuarium" without doubling the holiness term. For kol-'am haKahal, the LXX has "πάσης συναγωγῆς" ("all the assembly"), omitting a separate word for "people," while the Vulgate uses "universum populum" ("the whole people"), omitting the term for "assembly" that appears in the Hebrew construct chain.