Leviticus 22:21

Summary

The verse establishes a condition for peace offerings brought to Yehovah, whether from herd or flock, whether to fulfill a vow or as a freewill offering: the animal must be tamim ("unblemished", H8549G) in order to be accepted, with no defect present in it.

Key words

• yakRiv ("he will present", H7126H) — hiphil imperfect, a causative form indicating the offerer actively brings/causes the offering to draw near; the imperfect aspect frames this as a recurring or potential future case, consistent with the conditional ki ("if", H3588A) opening the clause.
• falle' ("fulfill", H6381) — piel infinitive construct, intensive stem denoting the act of "distinguishing" or "specifying" a vow; paired with neder ("a vow", H5088), it marks one of two possible motivations for the offering.
• tamim ("unblemished", H8549G) — masculine singular adjective, functioning as the predicate describing the required state of the animal before it can attain ratzon.
• yihyeh ("it will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, appearing twice in the verse (lines 21 and 27), each time projecting a future state: first that the animal "will be" unblemished, second that "no blemish will be" in it — a doubled structure reinforcing the requirement.
• ratzon ("acceptance", H7522) — masculine singular noun, the goal-state toward which the unblemished condition leads, expressed with the preposition le ("for", H9005).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with ve'ish ki ("and anyone if", H0376I + H3588A), a casuistic construction typical of legal material in Leviticus, setting up a general case rather than addressing a specific individual. The subject is deliberately unspecified — 'ish ("anyone") — so the law applies broadly to whoever brings the offering described.

The offering itself is identified as zevach-shelamim ("a sacrifice of peace offering[s]", H2077 construct + H8002), directed la-Yehovah ("to Yehovah", H3068G). Two possible occasions for this offering are given through parallel prepositional phrases: le-falle'-neder ("to fulfill a vow") or li-ndavah ("to a freewill offering", H5071), and the source of the animal is specified as ba-baqar ("in the herd", H1241) o va-tzon ("or in the flock", H6629G).

The core requirement follows in two grammatically parallel clauses, both using yihyeh ("it will be", H1961) in the qal imperfect: first, the animal tamim yihyeh le-ratzon ("unblemished it will be, for acceptance") — the adjective tamim precedes the verb for emphasis; second, kol-mum lo' yihyeh bo ("any blemish not will be in it"), where kol-mum ("any blemish", H3605 construct + H3971B) is fronted before the negation lo' ("not", H3808), giving prominence to the absolute exclusion of defect. The repetition of yihyeh across both clauses creates a chiastic reinforcement: the positive state required, then the negative state excluded.