Leviticus 4:3

Summary

Leviticus 4:3 opens the law for the "anointed priest" (kohen ha-mashiach) who sins, specifying that this sin brings 'ashmat ha-am ("guilt of the people", H0819) upon the community. The verse then requires him to bring an unblemished young bull to Yehovah as a chattat ("sin offering", H2403H) for the sin he committed.

Key words

• ha-kohen ha-mashiach — ha ("the", H9009) + kohen ("priest", H3548) + ha-mashiach ("anointed", H4899): a definite noun phrase identifying a specific priestly office, not priests generally.
• yechetá ("he will sin", H2398) — qal imperfect, marking an open, potential/future action; this is what the conditional 'im ("if", H0518A) governs.
• 'ashmat ha-am ("[the] guilt of the people", H0819 + H5971A) — a construct chain ("guilt of the people"), linking the priest's sin directly to the people's status.
• hiqriv ("he will present", H7126H) — hiphil (causative stem) in sequential perfect, continuing the narrative sequence begun by yechetá; it denotes causing an offering to draw near/be brought.
• chattat (H2403B / H2403H) — the same root appears twice in the verse: once as chatato ("his sin," the offense) and once as le-chattat ("as a sin offering," the sacrificial category), showing the term covers both the wrongdoing and its ritual remedy.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional clause ('im + imperfect verb) followed by a consequence introduced with a vav-sequential perfect (ve-hiqriv), a common Biblical Hebrew pattern where the protasis uses an imperfect and the apodosis continues in sequential perfect to indicate resulting or required action. The subject of both verbs is ha-kohen ha-mashiach, so the grammar keeps the anointed priest as the single agent throughout: he sins, and consequently he must bring an offering.

The phrase le-'ashmat ha-am attaches the priest's sin to the guilt-status of "the people" (ha-am, H5971A) via a construct relationship, literally "to/for the guilt of the people," rather than through an explicit causative verb. The text does not use a Hebrew verb meaning "cause to sin"; the linkage between the priest's act and the people's guilt is expressed only through this construct noun phrase.

The required offering, par ben-baqar tamim ("a bull, son of the herd, unblemished," H6499 + H1121H + H1241 + H8549G), is specified with the construct ben-baqar ("young one of the herd") and the adjective tamim ("unblemished," H8549G) agreeing with the masculine noun par. The offering is directed la-YHWH ("to Yehovah," H3068G) and classified le-chattat ("as a sin offering"), using the same root that earlier named the priest's "sin" (chatato), so the Hebrew text uses one word family for both the wrongdoing and its prescribed remedy.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew construct le-'ashmat ha-am ("to/for the guilt of the people") is rendered causatively in the LXX (ἁμάρτῃ τοῦ λαὸν ἁμαρτεῖν, "sins so that the people sin") and in the Vulgate (delinquere faciens populum, "causing the people to transgress"), both of which introduce an explicit causative sense absent from the Hebrew noun phrase itself. BSB ("bringing guilt on the people") and SBLIBRE ("hace culpable al pueblo") follow this causative reading. RV1909 instead renders it comparatively ("pecare según el pecado del pueblo," "sins according to the sin of the people"), differing from both the Hebrew construct and the causative renderings of the other versions.