Leviticus 6:25

Summary

Leviticus 6:25 records Yehovah's instruction to Moses to relay a legal procedure (torah) to Aaron and his sons concerning the chattat ("sin offering"). The verse specifies that this offering must be slaughtered at the same location as the olah ("burnt offering"), before Yehovah, and identifies it as an object of the highest degree of holiness.

Key words

• da.Ber ("speak", H1696G) — piel imperative, an intensive command form directing Moses to communicate this instruction.
• to.Rat ("[is] [the] legal [procedure] of", H8451) — feminine singular construct, linking grammatically to ha.chattat, forming the phrase "the torah of the sin offering."
• ti.sha.Chet ("it has its throat cut" / "it will have its throat cut", H7819A) — niphal imperfect, appearing twice (lines 17 and 20); the niphal stem marks the action as passive, the animal undergoes the slaughtering rather than performing it.
• li.f.Nei ("before", from H9005 + H6440G) — construct form of "face," here meaning "in the presence of," specifying the location relative to Yehovah.
• Ko.desh ka.da.Shim ("holy thing of holy things", H6944G) — construct chain repeating the same root, a superlative construction meaning the highest category of holiness.

What the text says

The verse opens with a direct command, da.Ber ("speak", H1696G), addressed to Moses, instructing him to convey information 'el 'a.ha.Ron ve.'el ba.Nav ("to Aaron and to his sons"). The content of the speech is introduced by le.Mor ("saying", H0559), a qal infinitive construct commonly used to open reported speech in Hebrew narrative.

The core statement uses a construct chain: zot to.Rat ha.chattat — "this [is] the torah of the sin offering." The word to.Rat (H8451) in construct form ties directly to ha.chattat (H2403H), establishing that what follows is procedural instruction specific to this offering type.

The spatial clause employs the relative particle 'a.Sher ("that/where", H0834A) governing a comparison between two locations: the place ti.sha.Chet ha.'o.Lah ("the burnt offering is slaughtered") and the place ti.sha.Chet ha.chattat ("the sin offering is slaughtered"). Both verbs are niphal imperfect of the same root H7819A, marking the animal as the grammatical subject of a passive action — the text does not specify who performs the slaughtering, only that it occurs "before Yehovah," li.f.Nei Yehovah.

The closing clause, Ko.desh ka.da.Shim hi', uses a superlative construct pattern (noun repeated in singular then plural construct) to classify the offering, with the feminine pronoun hi' ("it", H1931) referring back to ha.chattat.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders torat ha.chattat as "ὁ νόμος τῆς ἁμαρτίας" (literally "the law of the sin"), omitting an explicit word for "offering" that the Hebrew chattat (H2403H) carries contextually. The Vulgate similarly gives "lex hostiæ pro peccato" ("the law of the victim for sin"), adding "hostiae" (victim/sacrifice) not present as a separate lexeme in the Hebrew, where chattat itself denotes the offering. The LXX also renders the second occurrence of chattat as "τὰ περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας" ("the things concerning sin"), a periphrastic plural expansion differing from the Hebrew's singular noun repetition.