Leviticus 4:21

Summary

The verse describes the disposal of the bull whose blood was used for a purification offering: it is taken outside the camp and burned in the same manner as a previous bull, and the passage identifies this rite as belonging to the assembly's sin offering.

Key words

• ho.Tzi' ("he will bring out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: the subject causes the bull to go out, continuing the narrative sequence begun by a prior verb.
• sa.Raf ("he will burn" / "he burned", H8313) — appears twice: first as qal sequential perfect (the ongoing action), then as qal perfect (a completed past action) in the comparative clause "as he burned."
• cha.Tat ("sin offering of", H2403H) — feminine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be linked to the following noun ("of the assembly") rather than standing alone.
• ka.Hal ("assembly", H6951) — masculine singular noun, the entity to which the offering belongs, completing the construct chain with cha.Tat.
• Hu' ("it", H1931) — independent personal pronoun placed at the end of the clause, giving emphasis to the identification being made.

What the text says

The verse is built on two sequential perfect verbs — ho.Tzi' ("he will bring out") and sa.Raf ("he will burn") — both continuing a narrative chain established earlier in the chapter, describing consecutive actions performed by the same subject. The comparative clause ka.'a.Sher sa.Raf ("just as he burned") uses a plain qal perfect for the earlier, already-completed burning, contrasting grammatically with the sequential perfects describing the current action, even though both are translated with similar tense in English.

The final clause, cha.Tat ha.ka.Hal Hu' ("it is the sin offering of the assembly"), places the construct noun cha.Tat before ha.ka.Hal, forming a possessive link — "sin offering belonging to the assembly" — and closes with the independent pronoun Hu', which in Hebrew syntax often marks a summarizing or identifying statement, equivalent to saying "this is what it is."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verbs ho.Tzi' and sa.Raf are third-person singular ("he will bring out," "he will burn"), matching the Vulgate's singular forms efferet and comburet. The LXX, however, renders these as plural, ἐξοίσουσιν ("they will bring out") and κατακαύσουσιν ("they will burn"), shifting the implied subject from an individual to a group. The Vulgate's quia est pro peccato multitudinis ("because it is for the sin of the multitude") phrases the final clause as a causal statement, while the Hebrew cha.Tat ha.ka.Hal Hu' is a direct nominal identification without a causal conjunction.