Leviticus 4:20

Summary

Leviticus 4:20 prescribes that the priest treat the bull of this offering exactly as he treated the previous sin-offering bull, and states that this act of atonement results in forgiveness for the community. The verse closes a ritual unit with three sequential verbs describing action, atonement, and outcome.

Key words

• 'a.Sah ("he will do", H6213A) — appears three times in this verse (positions 2, 7, 13) with different forms: sequential perfect, plain perfect, and imperfect, tracking the comparison between past precedent and present/future action.
• cha.Tat ("sin offering", H2403H) — feminine singular noun in construct chain with Far ("bull of", H6499), naming the category of offering being referenced as the model.
• khi.Per ("he will make atonement", H3722A) — piel (intensive) stem, sequential perfect; the piel form marks this as an intensive/effective action of atonement performed by the priest, distinct from the simple qal actions of "doing."
• ko.Hen ("priest", H3548) — masculine singular noun, the subject who performs the atoning act.
• nis.Lach ("it will be forgiven", H5545) — niphal (passive) stem, sequential perfect; the passive form removes the grammatical agent, stating forgiveness as a resulting state rather than naming who forgives.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of sequential perfect verbs (vav-consecutive), a common Biblical Hebrew narrative structure that presents a series of actions as following one another in logical or temporal sequence: 'a.Sah ("he will do"), khi.Per ("he will make atonement"), and nis.Lach ("it will be forgiven"). Embedded within this chain is a comparative clause using ka.'a.Sher ("as", H0834D) — "just as he did to the bull of the sin offering, so he will do to it" — which uses a plain perfect ('a.Sah, position 7) for the past precedent and an imperfect (ya.'a.seh, position 13) for the present case, marking a grammatical distinction between completed past action and the action now to be repeated.

The final two verbs shift stem patterns: khi.Per is piel, giving the sense of a deliberate, intensive act performed by the ko.Hen ("priest", H3548) upon the group referenced by the suffix Hem ("them", H9038). nis.Lach is niphal, a passive construction that states the forgiveness as something that happens to the group without grammatically specifying an agent — the Hebrew text itself does not name who forgives, only that forgiveness occurs.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the final clause as "propitius erit eis Dominus" ("the Lord will be gracious to them"), explicitly naming an agent (Dominus, "the Lord") for the forgiveness. This differs from the Hebrew nis.Lach, which is a niphal passive with no stated agent, and from the LXX's ἀφεθήσεται ("it will be forgiven"), which likewise uses a passive construction without naming an agent, closer to the Hebrew structure.