Leviticus 5:7

Summary

This verse addresses a case where a person cannot afford a lamb for the offering described earlier in the chapter, permitting a substitute of two birds instead: one used as a sin offering and one as a burnt offering, both brought to Yehovah.

Key words

• ta.Gi' ("it will reach", H5060) — hiphil imperfect of the verb "to reach/touch," used causatively; combined with "hand," it forms an idiom about capability.
• ya.D ("hand", H3027I) — construct noun; paired with dei, it produces the idiom "his hand does not reach the sufficiency of," meaning financial inability.
• dei ("sufficiency of", H1767) — construct noun completing the idiom of affordability with ya.D.
• asham ("guilt offering", H0817) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, "his guilt offering," naming the category of the whole transaction even though the components brought are named differently below.
• chatat ("sin offering", H2403H) and olah ("burnt offering", H5930A) — two distinct feminine singular nouns, each governed by the preposition le ("to/for"), specifying the function assigned to each of the two birds.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conditional particle 'im ("if") plus the negation lo' ("not") governing the hiphil imperfect ta.Gi' ("it will reach"). The subject is ya.D...o ("his hand"), and the construct chain ya.D...dei seh literally reads "his hand [does not] reach the sufficiency of a sheep" — a Hebrew idiom expressing lack of financial means, rather than a literal statement about a hand touching an animal. This conditional clause is followed by the sequential perfect he.Vi' ("he will bring"), continuing the narrative logic of the case law: given the condition of insufficiency, the required action shifts.

The direct object is asham...o ("his guilt offering"), modified by the relative clause 'a.Sher chaTa' ("which he sinned"), tying the offering to a specific completed act of sin (qal perfect chaTa'). The two permitted substitutes, she.Tei to.Rim ("two turtledoves") or she.Nei ve.nei-yo.Nah ("two young ones of a dove"), are each introduced by dual construct numerals. The final clause allocates the two birds by function: 'echad le-chaTat ("one for a sin offering") and ve-'echad le-'olah ("and one for a burnt offering"). Grammatically, the overarching noun asham names the transaction as a whole, while the distributive clause specifies that the material components are a chaTat and an olah — two different sacrificial categories rather than two guilt offerings.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders asham...o ("his guilt offering") with the phrase "περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας αὐτοῦ" ("concerning his sin"), and the Vulgate similarly uses "pro peccato" ("for sin"), shifting the terminology from the Hebrew's reparation-offering vocabulary (asham) toward sin-offering language. The BSB attempts to preserve this nuance with "restitution for his sin," while the SBLIBRE combines both notions as "ofrenda por la culpa del pecado" ("offering for the guilt of the sin").