Leviticus 6:7

Summary

The verse states that the priest will perform an atoning act on behalf of a person before Yehovah, and that this person will be forgiven for any single wrongdoing among all the acts that created guilt for him.

Key words

• khiPer ("he will make atonement", H3722A) — piel stem, giving intensive/causative force ("to cover, atone"); sequential perfect continues the narrative chain from a previous verse.
• hakkoHen ("the priest", H3548) — definite noun, identifying the specific agent who performs the atoning action.
• nisLach ("it will be forgiven", H5545) — niphal stem, marking the verb as passive: the subject (the offense/person) receives forgiveness rather than granting it.
• 'aShmah ("guilt", H0819) — feminine singular noun, naming the resulting state of liability that the wrongdoing produces.
• 'aSher ("that", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause describing the range of acts covered ("all that he may do").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence links two verbal actions through the narrative vav construction: first khiPer ("he will make atonement", H3722A) performed by hakkoHen ("the priest", H3548) lifNei Yehovah ("before Yehovah", H6440G + H3068G), then nisLach ("it will be forgiven", H5545) as a resulting passive event. The shift from piel (active, intensive) to niphal (passive) marks a change in grammatical subject: the priest acts, but the forgiveness happens to the person without a stated human agent — the text does not name who forgives, only that forgiveness occurs "before Yehovah."

The phrase 'al-'aChat mikKol 'aSher ya'aSeh ("on one from all that he will do", H5921A + H0259 + H3605 + H0834A + H6213A) uses the qal imperfect ya'aSeh to indicate an open, repeatable category of action — not a single completed deed but any instance drawn from a general set of potential wrongdoings. The final clause le'aShmah vah ("to guilt in it/her", H0819 + H9034) uses the feminine suffix to refer back to the antecedent action ('aChat, "one," is feminine), indicating that the guilt is generated specifically through that particular committed act.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders khiPer as ἐξιλάσεται ("he will propitiate/make atonement"), consistent with the Hebrew piel, but adds καὶ ἐπλημμέλησεν αὐτῷ ("and he trespassed against him"), an additional clause not present in the Hebrew text as segmented here. The Vulgate condenses the relative clause 'aSher ya'aSeh le'aShmah vah into "quae faciendo peccavit" ("which he sinned in doing"), shifting the noun 'aShmah ("guilt") into a verbal construction ("peccavit," "he sinned") rather than preserving it as a distinct noun of resulting guilt.