Leviticus 7:30

Summary

The verse specifies that the offerer must personally bring the fire offerings of Yehovah with his own hands, carrying the fat together with the breast, so that the breast may be waved as a wave-offering before Yehovah.

Key words

• yaDav ("his hands", H3027) — dual construct form, emphasizing that the action is done with the offerer's own two hands, not delegated.
• teviEinah ("they will bring", H0935) — hiphil imperfect, feminine plural agreeing with "hands" as the grammatical subject; causative sense: "the hands cause [the offerings] to come."
• chelev ("fat", H2459) — definite singular noun, marked as direct object with 'et, naming the specific portion carried.
• chazeh ("breast", H2373) — definite singular noun, repeated three times in the verse, indicating the portion set aside for the waving rite.
• haNif ("to wave", H5130) — hiphil infinitive, expressing purpose ("in order to wave"), causative form showing the action performed upon the breast.

What the text says

The verse opens with an unusual grammatical construction: yaDav ("his hands") functions as the subject of the verb teviEinah ("they will bring"), which is grammatically feminine plural to agree with the dual noun "hands." This produces a literal sense of "his hands themselves shall bring," foregrounding the hands as the acting agent rather than the person in general. The object brought is 'ishei Yehovah ("the fire offerings of Yehovah", H0801), marked by the object particle 'et.

The sentence then shifts to a singular verb, yevi'Ennu ("he will bring it", H0935), whose subject reverts to the offerer as a person, carrying ha-chelev ("the fat") together 'al ("with", H5921) ha-chazeh ("the breast"). The breast is mentioned a second time as a distinct object of a purpose clause: le-haNif 'oto tenuFah ("to wave it as a wave-offering", H5130 + H8573), using the infinitive construct with prefixed le- to express intent. The noun tenuFah ("wave-offering") is cognate with the verb haNif ("to wave"), reinforcing the ritual action verbally and lexically. The final phrase, li-fnei Yehovah ("before the face of Yehovah", H6440), uses the construct plural "face of" to locate the action spatially in Yehovah's presence, a common idiom for ritual proximity.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew separates two verbal actions — "bringing" (bo' hiphil, twice) and "waving" (nuf hiphil, once) — with the breast (chazeh) named three times across the verse. The BSB and SBLIBRE preserve this repetition of "breast," while the Vulgate compresses the phrase into "pectusculum" (a diminutive, "little breast") mentioned once, and merges the bringing and waving into a single consecratory act ("cumque ambo oblata... consecraverit"), omitting the explicit repetition of chazeh found in the Hebrew.