Leviticus 6:14

Summary

The verse introduces the ritual instruction (torah) governing the minchah, the grain offering. It specifies that Aaron's sons must present this offering before Yehovah, at the front of the altar.

Key words

• to.Rat ("[is] [the] legal [procedure] of", H8451) — feminine singular construct noun opening the clause; it links directly to minchah, marking this verse as a formal instruction/regulation rather than narrative.
• min.Chah ("grain offering", H4503) — the specific offering type being regulated; distinct from animal sacrifices, this term designates a cereal-based offering.
• hak.Rev ("they will present", H7126) — hiphil (causative) absolute infinitive. As an infinitive absolute, it does not carry person/number marking on its own; it functions here as an authoritative directive, with the following noun phrase bene Aharon ("sons of Aaron") supplying the implied agent.
• be.nei ("[the] sons of", H1121) — masculine plural construct, forming a construct chain with Aharon, identifying the officiants required to perform the action.
• pe.Nei / fe.Nei ("[the] face of", H6440) — this construct noun appears twice in the verse (once with li-, "before," and once with 'el-, "to"), each time meaning "face of," producing a doubled spatial reference: "before the face of Yehovah" and "to the face of the altar."

What the text says

The verse opens with the demonstrative Zot ("this") plus to.Rat ("[is] [the] legal [procedure] of"), a formula that marks the beginning of a ritual regulation, comparable to a heading. The construct chain to.Rat ha-minchah ("[the] legal [procedure] of the grain offering") specifies the offering type being addressed.

The verb hak.Rev is grammatically an infinitive absolute in the hiphil stem. Its use here, without a finite verbal form immediately attached, gives the sentence a directive, almost legal-code tone: the instruction states the action ("to present/cause to be presented") and then identifies who carries it out — bene Aharon ("sons of Aaron") — functioning as the subject that executes the prescribed action.

The final clause layers two prepositional phrases built on the same noun, panim ("face"): lifnei Yehovah ("before the face of Yehovah") and 'el-penei ha-mizbeach ("to the face of the altar"). This repetition of "face" language, using two different prepositions (li- and 'el-), situates the offering both in Yehovah's presence and specifically oriented toward the altar's front.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders min.Chah ("grain offering", H4503) as thysias ("sacrifice"), a more general term than the Hebrew's specific cereal-offering vocabulary. The Vulgate expands the phrase to "sacrificii et libamentorum" ("of the sacrifice and of the libations"), adding a reference to libations not present in the Hebrew construct to.Rat ha-minchah. The Hebrew's infinitive absolute construction (hakrev, functioning as a directive) is rendered in the LXX as a relative clause, "hen prosaxousin autēn" ("which they will bring it"), shifting the grammatical structure from an impersonal legal formula to a subordinate clause with an explicit relative pronoun.