Leviticus 3:16

Summary

The priest burns the fat portions on the altar, described as food for a fire offering producing a soothing odor. The verse closes with a declarative statement: all fat belongs to Yehovah.

Key words

• hik.ti.Ram ("he will make smoke [them]", H6999A) — hiphil (causative) verb with 3rd person masculine plural suffix "them"; the priest causes the fat portions to go up in smoke, continuing the sequential narrative begun earlier in the chapter.
• miz.Be.chah ("altar" + directional he, H4196/H9011) — the directional he suffix marks motion "toward" or "onto" the altar, showing where the smoking action is directed.
• Lechem ("food of", H3899G) — construct form, meaning it must be linked to the following noun 'isheh, producing "food of a fire offering" rather than a standalone noun.
• Reiach ("odor of", H7381) — construct form linked to nichoach, forming the fixed pair "odor of soothing," a phrase describing the effect or quality of the offering.
• kol ("all", H3605) — construct form governing chelev ("fat," H2459), producing "all of the fat" as the subject of the closing clause.

What the text says

The verse opens with a narrative vav (ve-) attached to the verb hik.ti.Ram, continuing a sequence of priestly actions from earlier verses. The verb is hiphil, a causative stem, so the priest does not simply burn but causes the fat portions (marked by the 3rd person plural suffix "them") to go up in smoke. The noun ha-miz.Bechah carries a directional he suffix, indicating the smoke rises toward or onto the altar — a construction that in Hebrew fuses location and direction into one word.

The middle portion of the verse, lechem 'isheh le-reiach nichoach, consists of two chained construct phrases: "food of a fire-offering" and "an odor of soothing." Both are grammatically dependent nouns rather than independent statements; they function as an appositional description qualifying what is being burned, without a separate verb of their own. This gives the Hebrew a compressed, list-like quality where descriptive terms accumulate around the central verb of burning.

The final clause, kol chelev la-YHWH, forms a nominal (verbless) sentence: "all fat, to/for Yehovah," which functions as a possessive statement ("belongs to Yehovah") through the preposition la- rather than through any explicit verb "to be."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the descriptive middle section (lechem 'isheh, "food of a fire offering") more compactly as κάρπωμα ("offering/produce"), omitting a direct equivalent for lechem ("food"). The Vulgate expands this into in alimoniam ignis ("for the nourishment of the fire"), interpreting lechem as sustenance for the fire itself, a nuance not explicit in the Hebrew construct phrase, which simply links "food" to "fire-offering" without specifying that the fire is being fed.