Summary

Leviticus 2:3 states that what remains of the grain offering (minchah) after the priest's portion is burned belongs to Aaron and his sons, and identifies this remainder as "a holy thing of holy things" derived from the fire offerings of Yehovah.

Key words

• noTeret ("remainder", H3498) — niphal participle, feminine singular, functioning substantively as "the thing that remains/is left over"; the niphal stem marks this as a passive state resulting from a prior action (the burning of a portion).
• minChah ("grain offering", H4503G) — feminine singular noun naming the specific offering type from which the remainder comes.
• Kodesh ("a holy thing of", H6944G) — masculine singular construct form, meaning it must be joined to the following noun to complete its sense.
• kadaShim ("holy things", H6944G) — masculine plural, completing the construct chain with Kodesh to form the superlative expression.
• 'iShei ("fire offerings of", H0801) — masculine plural construct, linking the remainder's holiness to the category of offerings burned by fire for Yehovah.

What the text says

The verse opens with a participial construction: ha-noTeret ("the remaining [thing]"), a niphal participle functioning as a substantive subject. This grammatical form presents the remainder not as an action but as a resultant state — the portion that is left after a prior process (the priestly burning described in the preceding verses). The phrase min-ha-minChah ("from the grain offering") specifies the source.

The core assignment clause uses simple prepositions: le-'Aharon ("to Aaron") and u-le-vanav ("and to his sons"), marking possession or allocation without a stated verb — a nominal sentence construction common in legal/ritual Hebrew, where the preposition le ("to/for") itself carries the sense of belonging.

The final phrase, Kodesh kadaShim ("holy thing of holy things"), is a construct chain repeating the same root (H6944G) in singular followed by plural. This doubling construction in Biblical Hebrew intensifies the noun, producing a superlative sense — "most holy" — through repetition rather than a separate superlative grammatical form. The chain concludes with me-'iShei YHWH ("from the fire offerings of Yehovah"), a construct phrase identifying the category to which this holy status is attached, using 'iShei (construct plural of "fire offerings") bound to the divine name.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew Kodesh kadaShim (construct-chain intensification, "holy thing of holy things") is rendered by the LXX as ἅγιον τῶν ἁγίων ("holy of the holies"), preserving the repetition structure. The Vulgate renders it Sanctum sanctorum ("Holy of holies"), also preserving the doubling. Modern translations (BSB "a most holy part," SBLIBRE "una parte muy santa") resolve the construct repetition into an explicit superlative adjective, which is not a separate grammatical form in the Hebrew but an interpretive rendering of the doubled-noun construction.