Leviticus 3:1

Summary

Leviticus 3:1 opens the instructions for the zevach shelamim ("sacrifice of peace offerings"), specifying that if someone brings this type of offering from the herd, the animal may be male or female, but it must be unblemished when presented before Yehovah.

Key words

• Zevach ("sacrifice of", H2077) — masculine singular construct, meaning it must attach to the following noun to form the phrase "sacrifice of peace offerings."
• Shelamim ("peace offerings", H8002) — masculine plural noun; the plural form is used consistently for this offering category, not signaling multiple individual offerings but a fixed term.
• Karbano ("his offering", H7133A + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, literally "offering-of-him," identifying the offerer as the possessor of the sacrifice.
• Maqriv ("presenting", H7126H) — hiphil participle, describing the act of bringing near/offering as an ongoing or characteristic action of the one who brings the offering.
• Yaqrivennu ("he will present it", H7126H + H9033) — hiphil imperfect with object suffix, marking a future/ongoing instruction rather than a description, with "it" referring back to the animal.

What the text says

The verse is built almost entirely from conditional clauses introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A/H0518I), stacked to narrow down the type of offering step by step: first 'im establishes that the offering is a zevach shelamim, then a second 'im specifies that it comes from the herd (ha-baqar, "the herd", H1241), and two more instances of 'im (translated "whether... or") allow for either a zakhar ("male", H2145) or neqevah ("female", H5347). This layered conditional structure allows the text to cover multiple scenarios within a single sentence without repeating the verb each time.

Two different verb forms for the same root (H7126, "to bring near") appear in this verse: the participle maqriv ("presenting") describes the offerer as a person engaged in the type of action, while the imperfect yaqrivennu ("he will present it") gives the actual instruction with a direct object suffix. This shift from participle to finite verb marks a movement from general characterization of the offerer's action to the specific requirement of the animal being unblemished (tamim, H8549G) when brought before Yehovah.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shelamim as σωτηρίου ("of salvation/deliverance"), a translation choice that differs from the more neutral "peace offering" used in English versions, and the Vulgate follows with pacificorum ("of peace-making things"), closer to the English tradition. The Hebrew text names Yehovah (YHWH, H3068G) directly, while the LXX uses κυρίῳ ("to the lord") and the Vulgate Domino ("to the Lord"), both substituting a generic title for the divine name.