Leviticus 17:5

Summary

The verse gives the purpose of a legal instruction: the Israelites are to bring their sacrifices — currently slaughtered "in the open field" — instead to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, to the priest, in order to offer them there as peace offerings to Yehovah.

Key words

• yaviu ("they may bring", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) jussive of the root for "come/go", giving the sense "cause to come" = "bring"; introduces the purpose clause governed by lema'an ("so that", H4616).
• zovchim ("[are] sacrificing", H2076) — qal participle, masculine plural, describing an ongoing or habitual action rather than a single completed event: the people "are [in the habit of] sacrificing."
• penei ("face of", H6440J) — masculine plural construct of "face," used idiomatically with sadeh ("field", H7704G) to form the expression "on the face/surface of the field," i.e., the open field, outside any sanctuary.
• heviu ("they will bring", H0935P) — hiphil sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), continuing the syntactic chain begun by the jussive yaviu; it carries the narrative/legal sequence forward rather than starting a new clause.
• zavechu ("they will sacrifice", H2076) — qal sequential perfect, likewise chained to the preceding verbs, marking the final step of the sequence: bringing, then sacrificing at the sanctuary entrance.

What the text says

The clause opens with the double particle lema'an ("so that", H4616) plus 'asher ("that", H0834A), marking purpose: everything that follows explains the goal of a preceding regulation (not included in this verse) — namely, that the "sons of Israel" (bene Yisra'el, H1121G + H3478) bring their zivchei-hem ("their sacrifices", H2077 + H9028). A relative clause then specifies which sacrifices: those that "they are sacrificing" (hem zovchim, participle H2076) "upon the face of the field" (al-penei hasadeh), i.e., in the open country rather than at a sanctioned site.

After this description, the syntax shifts to two sequential perfects (veheviu, "and they will bring," H0935P; ve-zavechu, "and they will sacrifice," H2076), which continue the purpose clause as a logical/temporal sequence: first bringing the animals "to Yehovah, to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, to the priest," then sacrificing them there as zivchei shelamim ("sacrifices of peace offerings", H8002) "to Yehovah." The repeated direct-object marker 'et/'otam (H0853) marks both the sacrifices and the pronoun "them" as grammatical objects, without semantic content of its own. The participle zovchim contrasts with the perfect verbs that follow: the field-sacrificing is presented as continuous practice, while the bringing-and-sacrificing at the Tent entrance is presented as the resulting, sequential action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yaviu ("they may bring") with ἀναφέρωσιν ("they may offer up"), a verb of cult offering rather than simple bringing, and renders "al-penei hasadeh" ("upon the face of the field") as ἐν τοῖς πεδίοις ("in the plains/fields"), a plural noun without the "face of" idiom present in the Hebrew.

The Vulgate restructures the syntax: "Ideo sacerdoti offerre debent filii Israël hostias suas" ("Therefore the sons of Israel must offer their sacrifices to the priest") introduces "debent" ("they must"), an obligation not grammatically marked in the Hebrew's purpose-clause construction, and moves "sacerdoti" ("to the priest") to the front of the sentence rather than at its Hebrew position after "Tent of Meeting." The Vulgate also adds "ut sanctificentur Domino" ("so that they may be sanctified to the Lord"), a phrase without a direct lexical counterpart in the Hebrew, where the text simply says veheviu m la-YHWH ("and they will bring them to Yehovah").