Leviticus 4:29

Summary

The verse describes two ritual actions performed with a sin offering: the offerer lays his hand on the head of the animal, and then the animal's throat is cut at the same location where burnt offerings are slaughtered. The Hebrew presents this as a sequence of two consecutive actions using verb forms that continue a narrative chain.

Key words

• sa.makh ("he will lean", H5564) — qal sequential perfect; describes the act of pressing/leaning the hand onto the animal, continuing the ritual sequence begun in earlier verses.
• yad ("hand", H3027G) — construct form, "hand of," bound to the following pronominal suffix o ("his"), producing "his hand."
• chatat ("sin offering", H2403H) — feminine singular noun, appears twice (lines 9 and 14) referring to the same animal, first as the object of the hand-laying, then as the object of the slaughter.
• shachat ("he will cut the throat of", H7819A) — qal sequential perfect; a technical verb for ritual slaughter, distinct from general killing.
• maqom ("place of", H4725) — construct noun, "place of," bound to ha'olah ("the burnt offering"), specifying the location of slaughter by reference to another offering type.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of two sequential perfect verbs, each introduced by the narrative ve ("and"): sa.makh ("he will lean") and shachat ("he will cut the throat of"). This verb form indicates that the actions follow one another in a fixed ritual order, continuing from the instructions given in the preceding verses of the chapter. The subject of both verbs is grammatically implied as "he" (the offerer), consistent through the sequence.

The phrase yad-o ("his hand") uses a construct chain with a pronominal suffix, a common way in Biblical Hebrew to express possession without a separate possessive word. Similarly, rosh ha-chatat ("head of the sin offering") and meqom ha-'olah ("place of the burnt offering") are both construct chains, where the first noun is grammatically bound to the second, producing the sense "the head of X" and "the place of Y." The word chatat ("sin offering") is repeated twice in the verse, first as the object of the hand-laying and second as the object of the slaughter, keeping the same animal in focus throughout both actions. The location of the slaughter is defined relationally — not by an independent place name, but by reference to where burnt offerings ('olah) are slaughtered.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint shifts grammatical number between the two verbs: ἐπιθήσει ("he will place," singular) for the hand-laying, but σφάξουσιν ("they will slaughter," plural) for the throat-cutting, where the Hebrew keeps both verbs in a consistent singular sequential form. The LXX also renders the first occurrence of chatat as τοῦ ἁμαρτήματος ("of the sin/wrongdoing") and the second as τὴν χίμαιραν τὴν τῆς ἁμαρτίας ("the goat of sin"), introducing the term "goat" not explicit in the Hebrew noun chatat itself. The Vulgate renders chatat as "hostiae quae pro peccato est" ("the victim which is for sin") and refers back to it with the pronoun "eam" ("it," feminine), while translating ha'olah as "holocausti" (singular), matching the Hebrew singular where the LXX has the plural τὰ ὁλοκαυτώματα ("the burnt offerings").