Leviticus 4:33

Summary

The verse describes the ritual gesture of hand-laying on the head of a sin offering, followed by the slaughter of the animal in the same location designated for burnt offerings. The text specifies both the ritual action and its spatial location within the sacrificial system.

Key words

• sa.maKh ("he will lean", H5564) — qal sequential perfect, indicating the next action in the ritual sequence: the offerer presses his hand on the animal's head.
• ya.D ("hand", H3027G) — construct form followed by the suffix o ("his"), producing "his hand"; the construct chain ties the hand directly to its possessor.
• cha.Tat ("sin offering", H2403H) — feminine singular, appearing twice (lines 9 and 15), first with the definite article ha. ("the") marking the specific animal already introduced, then without the article marking the offering's category ("as a sin offering").
• sha.Chat ("he will cut [the] throat of", H7819A) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the action chain begun with sa.maKh.
• yish.Chat ("someone cuts [the] throat of", H7819A) — same root as above but in the imperfect, describing the general/customary practice at the location referenced, contrasting with the completed sequential action of the main verbs.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of sequential perfects (sa.maKh, sha.Chat) connected by the narrative ve ("and"), which in Biblical Hebrew narrative typically continues a sequence of actions rather than introducing simultaneous events. This grammatical structure presents the hand-laying and throat-cutting as two consecutive steps in a single ritual procedure.

The phrase rosh ha.chaTat ("head of the sin offering") uses a construct chain where rosh ("head") governs the definite noun cha.Tat with its article ha., marking it as the specific animal already under discussion in the passage. Later, le.chaTat ("to/as a sin offering") uses the same root without the article, functioning here to specify the purpose or category of the slaughter rather than to designate a particular animal — a grammatical distinction the English rendering "as a sin offering" attempts to capture.

The final clause shifts from sequential perfect to imperfect with yish.Chat ("someone cuts the throat of"), introduced by the relative particle 'a.Sher ("that/where"). This shift in verbal aspect marks a change from narrating the specific ritual action to describing the customary or standing practice regarding the location, i.e., the imperfect here refers to the established procedure for burnt offerings ('o.Lah, H5930A) at that place, not a single completed event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequential perfect verbs with future/subjunctive-type forms (ἐπιθήσει, "he will place"; σφάξουσιν, "they will slaughter"), and notably shifts the grammatical subject of the second slaughter verb to plural ("they slaughter") where the Hebrew yish.Chat is singular ("someone cuts"). The Vulgate uses solent caedi ("they are accustomed to be slaughtered"), an impersonal habitual construction that renders the same general-practice sense conveyed by the Hebrew imperfect yish.Chat, though through a different grammatical device (an idiom of custom rather than a verbal aspect shift).