Leviticus 5:10

Summary

This verse describes the second stage of the purification ritual for someone unable to afford a full offering: the second bird is offered as a burnt offering following prescribed procedure, after which the priest performs atonement for the person's sin, resulting in forgiveness.

Key words

• ya.'a.Seh ("he will offer/make", H6213I) — qal imperfect, third masculine singular; the ongoing/future aspect indicates the prescribed next action in the ritual sequence, though the subject (priest) is not explicit here but implied from context.
• ka.mish.Pat ("according to the ordinance", H4941G with H9004) — noun in construct with the preposition ka ("according to/like"), indicating conformity to an established legal/ritual norm rather than improvisation.
• khi.Per ("he will make atonement", H3722A) — piel (intensive stem) sequential perfect; the piel form intensifies the basic verbal idea, and the sequential perfect (vav-consecutive) continues the narrative chain from the previous imperfect verb.
• me.chata.T-o ("from his sin", H2403B + H9023) — feminine singular noun in construct with pronominal suffix "his"; the preposition me ("from") indicates the sin as the object from which atonement removes guilt.
• nis.Lach ("it will be forgiven", H5545) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect; the passive voice leaves the agent of forgiveness unstated, describing only the resulting state.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence chains three verbal actions using vav-consecutive forms: an initial imperfect (ya.'a.Seh, "he will offer") followed by two sequential perfects (khi.Per, "he will make atonement"; nis.Lach, "it will be forgiven"). This grammatical pattern, common in Biblical Hebrew legal/ritual texts, presents a sequence of events as a unified procedural whole rather than isolated actions. The phrase ka.mish.Pat ("according to the ordinance") anchors this specific offering to an established norm, suggesting the ritual follows a fixed pattern described elsewhere.

The piel stem of khi.Per ("he will make atonement") carries an intensive or effective sense — the priest actively performs the atoning action, distinct from the simple (qal) stem used for the person's sin, cha.Ta' ("he has sinned"), which is in the qal perfect indicating the completed prior act of wrongdoing. The final verb, nis.Lach ("it will be forgiven"), is niphal — a passive form that does not name who forgives; the grammar states only that forgiveness occurs "to him" (lo), without specifying the forgiving agent grammatically, though the ritual context implies it results from the priestly action just described.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders khi.Per ("he will make atonement", H3722A) with ἐξιλάσεται ("he will propitiate/atone"), a semantically close rendering. The Vulgate expands the phrase me.chata.T-o ("from his sin") into "et pro peccato ejus" ("and for his sin"), adding an explicit conjunction not present as a separate word in the Hebrew construct phrase, making the two-part action (atonement for him / for his sin) more syntactically distinct than the Hebrew's single prepositional construct chain.