Leviticus 6:16

Summary

The verse specifies who eats the remainder of the offering (Aaron and his sons), how it must be prepared (without leaven), and where it must be consumed (a holy place, the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting). The instructions combine dietary restriction with spatial restriction.

Key words

• noTeret ("remainder", H3498) — niphal participle feminine singular, functioning as a substantive: "that which remains/is left over," referring back to the grain offering.
• yokheLu ("they will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; used twice (positions 6 and 20) with Aaron and his sons as subject, marking ongoing/future obligation.
• matsot ("unleavened bread", H4682) — feminine plural noun, here functioning adverbially/predicatively to specify the manner of preparation rather than naming a separate food item.
• te'aKhel ("it will be eaten", H0398) — niphal imperfect feminine singular, same root as yokheLu but passive voice, shifting focus from the eaters to the object being eaten.
• kaDosh ("holy", H6918G) — masculine singular adjective modifying maKom ("place", H4725), qualifying the location required for consumption.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure alternates between active and passive constructions built on the same root 'akal ("to eat", H0398). The verse opens with an active qal form (yokheLu, "they will eat") naming Aaron and his sons as agents, then shifts to a passive niphal form (te'aKhel, "it will be eaten") that foregrounds the manner (matsot, "as unleavened") rather than the agent. The verse closes by returning to the active form (yokheLu) with a pronominal suffix (-ha, "her/it") that grammatically points back to noTeret ("the remainder"), tying the entire structure together.

The location is expressed through a chain of construct nouns: chatsar ("courtyard of", H2691A) governs 'ohel ("tent of", H0168G), which governs mo'ed ("meeting", H4150I) — a construct chain producing "courtyard of the tent of meeting." This nested construct phrase narrows the location from the general "holy place" (maKom kaDosh) to the specific courtyard.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders matsot ("unleavened bread", H4682) as ἄζυμα ("unleavened things"), preserving the plural but treating it as a predicate adjective describing how the substance is eaten, similar to the Hebrew's adverbial use. The Vulgate translates the same term as "absque fermento" ("without leaven"), an explicit prepositional phrase rather than a nominal form, making the manner-of-preparation function more syntactically explicit than either the Hebrew or Greek. The Vulgate also condenses the final repetition of "they will eat" (yokheLu) found in the Hebrew and LXX into a single verb "comedet," omitting the closing verbal echo present in the source text.