Leviticus 22:30

Summary

Leviticus 22:30 instructs that a specific offering must be eaten on the same day it is offered, with nothing left over until the following morning. The verse closes with the self-identifying formula "I am Yehovah."

Key words

• ba.Yom ("on the day", H3117G) — noun with prefixed preposition and article, marking the temporal frame within which the eating must occur.
• yē'āḵēl ("it will be eaten", H0398) — niphal imperfect, a passive/reflexive form indicating the action is done to the meat by an unspecified agent, without naming who eats it.
• tôtîrû ("you will leave over", H3498) — hiphil imperfect, a causative form: the subject actively causes something to remain, here negated.
• mimmennu ("from it", H4480A + suffix) — preposition with third-person pronominal suffix, referring back to the offering mentioned earlier in the passage (not present in this verse but implied by yē'āḵēl).
• 'ănî Yehovah ("I [am] Yehovah", H0589 + H3068G) — independent pronoun followed by the divine name, a fixed closing formula in this chapter.

What the text says

The verse divides into two commands framed by a temporal marker and closed with the identification formula. The opening phrase ba.Yom ha.Hu' ("on the day, that one") uses a demonstrative construction — noun plus article plus pronoun — to emphasize the specific day already established by context, rather than introducing a new one. The verb yē'āḵēl is niphal, meaning the grammatical subject (the meat, referenced by the following pronoun) undergoes the eating; the text does not specify who performs it, only that it must happen.

The second clause shifts to a direct prohibition addressed to a plural "you" (masculine): lo'-tôtîru ("you will not leave over"). The hiphil stem of tôtîru is causative — the prohibited action is not passive leftover but the active causing of leftover material to exist. This is temporally bounded by 'ad-Boker ("until morning"), fixing the deadline precisely at the following dawn rather than any later point.

The final clause, 'ănî Yehovah, stands grammatically independent of the preceding commands — a nominal sentence with no verb, simply juxtaposing the pronoun and the divine name as a self-declaration attached to the instruction.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tôtîrû ("you will leave over", hiphil) with ἀπολείψετε, structurally parallel but drops the explicit "from it" object marker seen in the Hebrew mimmennu, instead reading "you will not leave... unto the morning" without the intervening pronoun. The Vulgate expands 'ad-Boker ("until morning") into "in mane alterius diei" ("into the morning of the next day"), an interpretive clarification not present as separate wording in the Hebrew, which uses only the single noun Boker ("morning").