Leviticus 17:4

Summary

Leviticus 17:4 describes the legal consequence for someone who slaughters an animal without bringing it to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting to present it as an offering to Yehovah. The verse states that blood-guilt is imputed to that person, and specifies the penalty: being cut off from among his people.

Key words

• he.vi' ("he has brought", H0935P) — hiphil perfect (causative, completed action); describes the failure to cause the offering to be brought to the sanctuary entrance.
• yechashev ("it will be reckoned", H2803H) — niphal imperfect (passive voice); the blood is "reckoned" or "imputed" to the man, with no stated agent doing the reckoning.
• dam ("blood", H1818) — appears twice in the verse, once as subject of the passive verb yechashev, once as object of the active verb shafakh, creating a repetition characteristic of legal formulas.
• shafakh ("he has shed", H8210H) — qal perfect (simple, completed, active voice), describing the man's own action of shedding blood.
• nikhrat ("he will be cut off", H3772I) — niphal sequential perfect (a weqatal form continuing the verbal sequence), stating the resulting penalty.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows a casuistic (case-law) structure: a condition (failure to bring the offering to the tent's entrance for presentation lifnei mishkan Yehovah, "before the dwelling place of Yehovah," H4908) is followed by consequences. The verb yechashev is niphal — passive — so grammatically no explicit subject performs the "reckoning"; blood-guilt simply accrues to the man. This passive statement is immediately followed by an active qal clause, dam shafakh ("blood he has shed"), where the same word dam now functions as the direct object of an active verb. This shift from passive to active with repetition of dam underscores the same fact — bloodshed — from two grammatical angles within a single verse.

The consequence clause uses nikhrat, a niphal sequential perfect that continues the verbal chain begun by yechashev. Both are niphal forms, marking the man as the passive recipient of both the reckoning and the cutting-off, rather than as an agent acting upon himself.

Differences between versions

The LXX text as given contains additional material not present in the Hebrew word list — references to "whole burnt offering or peace offering" (ὁλοκαύτωμα ἢ σωτήριον) and "sweet-smelling savor" (ὀσμὴν εὐωδίας), along with a clause about "whoever slaughters outside" (ὃς ἂν σφάξῃ ἔξω). Where the Hebrew has ha'ish hahu ("that man," H0376G + H1931), the LXX renders the final clause with ψυχὴ ἐκείνη ("that soul") rather than a term for "man." The Vulgate renders the passive dam yechashev ("blood will be reckoned") as "sanguinis reus erit" ("he will be guilty of blood"), making explicit a guilt-status that the Hebrew niphal leaves grammatically unstated.