Leviticus 6:12

Summary

The verse commands that the fire on the altar must keep burning continuously and never be extinguished. Each morning the priest must add wood to it, arrange the burnt offering on it, and burn the fat portions of the peace offerings on it.

Key words

• tukad ("it will burn", H3344) — hophal (causative-passive) imperfect: the fire "is kept burning" by an external agent, not simply burning on its own.
• tikhbeh ("it will be extinguished", H3518) — qal imperfect with the negation lo' ("not", H3808): a straightforward prohibition against the fire going out.
• vi'er ("he will kindle", H1197A) — piel (intensive) sequential perfect: an intensive verb form describing the priest's repeated, deliberate act of feeding the fire.
• baboker baboker ("in the morning, in the morning", H1242 doubled) — the repetition of the noun expresses distributive recurrence, i.e., "every single morning."
• hiqtir ("he will make smoke", H6999A) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: the priest causes the fat to go up in smoke, distinct from ordinary burning.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with ha'esh ("the fire", H0784) as subject, followed by the hophal verb tukad ("it will burn", H3344): the causative-passive form indicates the fire is maintained by an agent (the priest) rather than burning autonomously. This is immediately reinforced by the negative clause lo' tikhbeh ("it will not be extinguished", H3518), a qal imperfect stating the prohibition directly.

The rest of the verse is a chain of sequential perfects (vi'er, 'arakh, hiqtir) linked by the narrative vav (H9001), describing the priest's ordered actions: kindling wood with the piel verb vi'er ("he will kindle", H1197A), arranging the burnt offering with the qal verb 'arakh ("he will arrange", H6186A), and finally causing the fat of the peace offerings to smoke with the hiphil verb hiqtir ("he will make smoke", H6999A). The doubling baboker baboker ("in the morning, in the morning", H1242) is a Hebrew distributive construction, conveying repetition on each individual morning rather than a single occurrence. Each verb in the chain uses a distinct binyan (stem), marking different levels of agency: passive-causative for the fire, intensive for kindling, simple for arranging, and causative for the smoke-offering action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders baboker baboker ("in the morning, in the morning", H1242) with a single τὸ πρωὶ ("in the morning"), not reproducing the Hebrew's doubled distributive form. The Vulgate expresses this repetition differently, using per singulos dies ("through each day"), which shifts the emphasis from "every morning" to "every day."