Leviticus 5:15

Summary

Leviticus 5:15 establishes a case law: if a person commits an unintentional offense involving Yehovah's sacred property, that person must bring a guilt offering — an unblemished ram from the flock, valued in silver shekels according to the sanctuary standard.

Key words

• tim.'Ol ("it will act unfaithfully", H4603) — Qal imperfect, indicating an action viewed as ongoing or potential ("if [someone] should act unfaithfully"), paired with its cognate noun Ma.'al ("unfaithfulness", H4604) in a verb-plus-object-of-same-root construction that intensifies the verbal idea.
• cha.te.'Ah ("it will sin", H2398) — sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), continuing the conditional clause begun by tim.'Ol; grammatically it advances the narrative sequence rather than introducing a new independent statement.
• sh.ga.Gah ("inadvertence", H7684) — feminine singular noun following the preposition bi ("by", H9003), specifying the manner of the sin as unintentional.
• ka.de.Shei ("[the] holy things of", H6944G) — masculine plural construct, meaning it must be followed by a genitive; here followed by Yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068G), yielding "the holy things of Yehovah."
• he.Vi' ("he will bring", H0935P) — Hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, meaning literally "he will cause to come/bring," continuing the legal sequence after the sin is described.

What the text says

The verse opens with Ne.fesh ("anyone", H5315J), a feminine singular noun used generically for "a person," followed by the conditional particle ki- ("if", H3588A). The grammatical subject is treated as feminine throughout the verse's verbs (tim.'Ol, cha.te.'Ah), agreeing with the grammatical gender of Ne.fesh, even though the referent is any person regardless of sex. The construction tim.'Ol Ma.'al — verb plus a noun from the same root — is a cognate accusative structure, which in Hebrew emphasizes the verbal action ("act unfaithfully with unfaithfulness/a breach of faith").

The sequence of verb forms is significant: an imperfect (tim.'Ol) is followed by two sequential perfects (cha.te.'Ah, he.Vi'), a pattern in Biblical Hebrew casuistic law where the initial imperfect sets the conditional frame and the following perfects narrate the resulting chain of events — sin, then the required remedy. The phrase mi-ka.de.Shei Yehovah uses the construct chain "holy things of Yehovah" to specify that the offense concerns consecrated property. The final clause repeats 'a.Sham ("guilt offering", H0817), first as a construct noun with a pronominal suffix ('a.sha.M-o, "his guilt offering") introducing the object to be brought, then again at the very end without suffix, labeling the ram itself as le-'a.Sham ("as a guilt offering"), a preposition-plus-noun that classifies the animal's ritual function.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tim.'Ol Ma.'al ("it will act unfaithfully" + "unfaithfulness") as λάθῃ αὐτὸν λήθη ("forgetfulness overtakes him"), shifting the Hebrew's language of faithlessness/breach toward the semantic field of forgetting. The Vulgate's prævaricans cæremonias ("transgressing the ceremonies") introduces the specific term "ceremonies," which is not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew, where mi-ka.de.Shei Yehovah simply says "from the holy things of Yehovah."