Leviticus 4:35

Summary

The verse describes the final steps of the purification offering ritual: removal of all the fat following the same procedure used for peace offerings, its burning on the altar, and the resulting atonement and forgiveness for the person who sinned.

Key words

• yasir ("he will remove", H5493G) — hiphil (causative) imperfect; the priest is the causal agent performing the removal of fat as an ongoing/future ritual act.
• yusar ("it is removed", H5493G) — hophal (causative passive) imperfect, same root as yasir but passive voice; it describes the established pattern/procedure already followed for the peace offering, against which the current action is measured (ka'asher, "as", H0834D).
• hiqtir ("he will make smoke", H6999A) — hiphil sequential perfect; continues the narrative chain begun by yasir, marking the next completed-in-sequence ritual step, the burning of the fat.
• kipper ("he will make atonement", H3722A) — piel (intensive) sequential perfect; the priest performs an intensive act of atonement, grammatically chained to the preceding burning action.
• nislach ("it will be forgiven", H5545) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect; the final link in the chain, marking forgiveness as a passive result without naming an agent.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of verbs connected by the narrative vav (H9001), where each sequential perfect (hiqtir, kipper, nislach) advances the ritual procedure after the initial imperfect yasir. This creates a tight cause-and-effect sequence: removal → burning → atonement → forgiveness, each step grammatically dependent on the one before it.

A notable feature is the pairing of yasir (hiphil, active, "he removes") with yusar (hophal, passive, "it is removed") from the same root H5493. The comparative clause ka'asher yusar ("just as it is removed") uses the passive form to describe the fixed pattern already established for the peace offering (shelamim, H8002), while the active form describes the priest currently performing the analogous action for the sin offering. This root-repetition with stem-change is a grammatical feature not easily rendered in translation, where both instances are typically translated simply as "remove."

The final verb, nislach ("it will be forgiven"), is niphal — passive without a stated agent — leaving grammatically unspecified who forgives, in contrast to the explicit agency of the priest (hakohen, H3548) in the preceding atonement and burning actions.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders "al ishei YHWH" ("on the fire offerings of Yehovah") as "ἐπὶ τὸ ὁλοκαύτωμα Τυρίου" ("on the burnt offering of Tyrius"), diverging both in content (burnt offering vs. fire offerings) and in the substitution of "Tyrius" where the Hebrew names YHWH (H3068G). The Vulgate's "in incensum Domini" ("into a burnt-offering of the Lord") stays closer to the Hebrew sense of "fire offering" and preserves the divine name as "Domini."