Leviticus 4:19

Summary

The verse describes the priest's ritual action with the fat of the sin offering: he removes all the fat from the sacrificial animal and burns it as smoke offering on the altar. This concludes the fat-portion procedure within the broader ritual sequence of the sin offering.

Key words

• chel.vo ("its fat", H2459) — masculine singular noun in construct form with pronominal suffix "its," referring back to the sacrificial animal; construct state ties it grammatically to the following implied relationship of possession.
• ya.Rim ("he will lift up / remove", H7311A) — Hiphil imperfect, causative stem indicating the priest causes the fat to be lifted away; imperfect aspect marks this as an ongoing or prescribed future action within ritual instruction.
• hik.Tir ("he will make [it] smoke", H6999A) — Hiphil sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), causative stem describing the act of turning the fat into smoke; the sequential form links this action directly to the prior removal, marking narrative/legal continuation.
• miz.Be.chah ("toward the altar", H4196 + H9011) — masculine singular noun with directional he suffix, indicating motion toward the altar as the destination of the burning action.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two sequential verbs, both in the Hiphil (causative) stem, describing the priest's two-step handling of the fat: first ya.Rim ("he will lift up," H7311A) and then hik.Tir ("he will make [it] smoke," H6999A). The shift from imperfect to vav-consecutive perfect is a classic Biblical Hebrew narrative pattern that presents the second action as following directly and inevitably from the first — the removal leads to the burning without narrative gap. The causative force of both verbs emphasizes that the priest is the agent producing these effects on the fat, not merely a passive assistant.

The object phrase kol-chel.vo ("all its fat," H3605 + H2459) uses the construct chain "all of the fat of it" to specify totality — the entire fat portion, not a part, is designated for this ritual action. The directional suffix on miz.Be.chah ("toward the altar," H4196 + H9011) is a common Biblical Hebrew device indicating the goal or destination of motion, here specifying that the smoke-producing action culminates at the altar as its terminus.

Differences between versions

The LXX uses periairei ("he will remove") for the lifting/removing action, a straightforward rendering matching the Hiphil sense of ya.Rim. The Vulgate's tollet ("he will take away") and adolebit ("he will burn") similarly preserve the two-step structure. No substantive divergence in meaning appears among the Hebrew, LXX, and Vulgate for this verse; differences are limited to normal translational vocabulary choices across languages.