Leviticus 5:19

Summary

The verse closes a legal ruling on the guilt offering by declaring the sacrifice's identity (asham, "guilt offering") and reaffirming, through an emphatic verbal construction, that the person in question has incurred genuine guilt before Yehovah.

Key words

• asham ("guilt offering", H0817) — masculine singular noun naming the sacrifice itself; it opens the verse as the predicate identifying what has just been prescribed.
• hu' ("it/he", H1931) — third-person personal pronoun functioning as the copula, linking the offering to its identification: "it [is] a guilt offering."
• ashom ("certainly ", H0816) — infinitive absolute of the root for guilt; in Hebrew this form does not stand alone grammatically but reinforces the finite verb that follows, producing emphasis ("surely," "certainly").
• asham ("he was guilty", H0816) — same root as the infinitive absolute, now in the qal perfect, third-person masculine singular, denoting a completed state of guilt attributed to the subject.
• la-Yehovah ("to/before Yehovah", H9005 + H3068) — preposition la attached to the divine name, marking the one against whom the guilt is reckoned.

What the text says

The verse divides into two short clauses. The first, asham hu' ("[is] a guilt offering, it"), is a nominal sentence with the pronoun hu' serving as the copula between the noun asham and an implied prior subject (the offering discussed in the preceding verses). This clause simply names the category of sacrifice.

The second clause, ashom asham la-Yehovah, uses the infinitive absolute ashom followed immediately by the finite perfect verb asham from the same root (H0816). This doubling of the root — infinitive absolute plus finite verb — is a Hebrew construction that intensifies or confirms the verbal action; English and Spanish translations render this emphasis with adverbs such as "certainly" or "verdaderamente." The completed aspect of the perfect asham indicates that the state of guilt is treated as an accomplished fact, not a possibility. The phrase la-Yehovah specifies that this guilt is reckoned relative to Yehovah, using the preposition la ("to/before") attached directly to the divine name.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the emphatic Hebrew doubling (ashom asham) with the single verb eplēmmelēsen ("he trespassed/sinned") plus the cognate noun plēmmelēsin ("trespass"), achieving a similar intensifying effect through a verb-noun pairing rather than infinitive-plus-finite-verb repetition. The Vulgate compresses the construction further, using per errorem deliquit ("he sinned through error"), which introduces the notion of "error" not explicit in the Hebrew root asham ("guilt") itself. The Hebrew la-Yehovah ("to/before Yehovah") appears in the LXX as enanti kyriou ("before the Lord") and in the Vulgate as in Dominum ("against the Lord"), each preposition choice slightly shifting the relational nuance between the guilty party and the divine name.