Leviticus 3:8

Summary

Leviticus 3:8 describes the offerer placing his hand on the head of his sacrificial offering, slaughtering it before the Tent of Meeting, and Aaron's sons throwing its blood against all sides of the altar. The verse continues the sequence of ritual actions for the peace/well-being offering.

Key words

• sa.Makh ("he will lean", H5564) — qal sequential perfect, third person masculine singular, denoting the act of pressing or leaning the hand upon the offering's head.
• ya.D ("hand", H3027G) — construct singular noun, joined to the pronominal suffix o ("his"), forming "his hand."
• sha.Chat ("he will cut the throat of", H7819A) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the same subject as the previous verb, describing the slaughter action.
• za.re.ku ("they will sprinkle", H2236) — qal sequential perfect, third person plural, shifting the subject to be.Nei 'a.ha.Ron ("sons of Aaron", H1121A/H0175).
• sa.Viv ("all around", H5439H) — common gender singular noun functioning adverbially, indicating the blood is applied around the altar's sides.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of sequential perfect verbs joined by the narrative ve ("and", H9001), each continuing the ritual sequence begun in the preceding verses: sa.Makh ("he will lean"), sha.Chat ("he will cut the throat of"), and za.re.ku ("they will sprinkle"). The first two verbs share the same unstated subject (the offerer), while the third verb shifts the subject explicitly to be.Nei 'a.ha.Ron ("sons of Aaron"), marking a transition in the ritual from the offerer's actions to the priests' actions.

The construct chains — ya.D...o ("his hand"), rosh qa.re.ba.N...o ("head of his offering"), da.M...o ("its blood") — each attach a pronominal suffix to a construct noun, a common Hebrew method of expressing possession without a separate possessive word. The phrase li.f.Nei 'O.hel mo.'Ed ("before the tent of meeting") uses the construct plural noun f.Nei ("faces of/before") governing 'O.hel mo.'Ed ("tent of meeting"), a standard spatial construction in Hebrew placing an action "in front of" a location. The final phrase 'al ha.miz.Be.ach sa.Viv ("on the altar, all around") places the adverbial sa.Viv after the object, indicating that the blood-sprinkling covers the altar's perimeter rather than a single point.

Differences between versions

The LXX specifies the location of slaughter as παρὰ τὰς θύρας τῆς σκηνῆς ("beside the doors of the tent"), while the Hebrew li.f.Nei 'O.hel mo.'Ed reads simply "before the tent of meeting," without mentioning doors. The LXX also adds οἱ ἱερεῖς ("the priests") as an explanatory apposition to "sons of Aaron," a specification not present in the Hebrew text. The Vulgate's fundentque... per circuitum altaris ("and they will pour... around the altar") renders za.re.ku ("sprinkle") with a verb of pouring (fundere) rather than the more specific sprinkling/throwing action indicated by the Hebrew root.