Leviticus 23:20

Summary

Leviticus 23:20 describes the priest's ritual gesture of waving the two lambs (referred to here by a pronoun before their explicit mention) together with the bread of the firstfruits before Yehovah. The verse closes by declaring these offerings holy to Yehovah, with their disposition assigned to the priest.

Key words

• he.Nif ("he will wave", H5130B) — hiphil (causative) form, sequential perfect continuing the narrative chain; the priest causes the objects to move in the waving gesture.
• lechem ("[the] bread of", H3899H) — masculine singular construct, linking to bikkurim ("firstfruits", H1061) to form "bread of the firstfruits."
• tenufah ("a wave-offering", H8573) — feminine singular noun standing in apposition to the verbal action, naming the category of ritual gesture rather than forming a construct chain.
• qodesh ("a holy thing", H6944G) — masculine singular noun placed before the verb yihyu ("they will be", H1961), fronting the predicate.
• 'al ("with", H5921A) — preposition used twice in the verse, once linking the waving to the bread and once to the two lambs, marking association rather than location.

What the text says

The clause opens with the sequential verb he.Nif ("he will wave", H5130B), whose subject is ha.kohen ("the priest", H3548). The direct object is marked by 'otam ("them", H0853 + H9038), a third-person plural suffix that grammatically precedes its own referent: the phrase shenei kevasim ("two lambs", H8147 + H3532) does not appear until later in the sentence. This is a case where the pronoun anticipates a noun stated afterward, so the reader/hearer must wait for the explicit antecedent to confirm what "them" designates. Between the pronoun and its later referent, the text inserts the phrase 'al lechem ha-bikkurim ("with the bread of the firstfruits"), using the construct chain lechem ha-bikkurim to specify which bread is meant, and appending tenufah ("wave-offering") in apposition to describe the nature of the action, not as a further construct.

The final clause, qodesh yihyu la-YHWH la-kohen, places the predicate noun qodesh ("a holy thing") before the verb yihyu ("they will be"), a fronting that gives prominence to the quality of holiness before stating the subject's state. Two parallel prepositional phrases follow, la-YHWH ("to Yehovah") and la-kohen ("to/for the priest"), both using the preposition le- (H9005), indicating two different relations — one of ownership/dedication, the other of assigned use — attached to the same set of offerings.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders he.Nif ("he will wave") as ἐπιθήσει ("he will place/put"), a different verbal sense than "wave." The Vulgate uses elevaverit ("he will lift up"), closer to a raising motion than a waving one. The LXX also adds the phrase "τῷ ἱερεῖ τῷ προσφέροντι αὐτά, αὐτῶ ὦσται" ("to the priest who offers them, it shall be his"), an expansion not present in the Hebrew's brief la-kohen ("for the priest"). The Vulgate condenses the final Hebrew clauses into "cedent in usum ejus" ("they shall pass to his use"), omitting a separate explicit statement that the offerings are "holy to the LORD" as a distinct clause before mentioning the priest's portion.