Leviticus 8:15

Summary

The verse describes Moses slaughtering the sacrificial animal, taking its blood, applying it to the horns of the altar, and pouring the remainder at its base. This action is described as purifying the altar and consecrating it for future atonement.

Key words

• va‑yish.chat ("he cut the throat of it", H7819A) — qal narrative form; the vav‑consecutive links this act as the first in a chain of sequential actions performed by Moses.
• va‑ye.chate' ("he cleansed from sin", H2398) — piel narrative form of the root chata', the same root underlying "sin"; the piel stem gives it an intensive/causative sense, "to de‑sin" or purify by removing sin-status from the object (the altar).
• ya.tzak ("he poured", H3332G) — qal perfect, not narrative vav; this shift from the vav-consecutive chain to a simple perfect marks this clause slightly differently, though it still continues the sequence of actions in translation.
• va‑yeqaddeshe.hu ("he set apart as holy [it]", H6942G) — piel narrative form of qadash, with 3ms suffix "it" (the altar); piel intensifies the action of setting apart/consecrating.
• le‑khapper ("to make atonement", H3722A) — piel infinitive construct with prefixed le, expressing purpose: "in order to atone," describing the goal of the altar's consecration.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs, each marked "and then": va‑yishchat ("and he slaughtered"), va‑yiqqach ("and he took"), va‑yitten ("and he put"), va‑yechatte' ("and he purified"), and va‑yeqaddeshehu ("and he consecrated it"). This chain presents the ritual as a single continuous sequence of acts performed by Moshe (Mosheh, H4872). The verb ya.tzak ("he poured", H3332G) breaks this pattern by appearing as a qal perfect rather than a vav-consecutive form, which in Hebrew narrative can indicate a slight background or parenthetical note within the main sequence — here, the disposal of the remaining blood at the base of the altar.

The verb va‑yechatte' (H2398, piel) is built on the same root as "sin" (chata'), so the action performed on the altar is grammatically the same root that elsewhere means "to sin" — in the piel stem here it denotes removing sin-consequence from the object, rendered as "purified" or "cleansed from sin" in the gloss. The final clause uses the infinitive le‑khapper (H3722A) to state the purpose of the whole sequence: the consecration of the altar is oriented toward future acts of atonement performed "on it" ('alav, from 'al, H5921A, with 3ms suffix).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va‑yishchat with an added direct object αὐτόν ("he slaughtered it/him"), making explicit an object that the Hebrew leaves implicit in this verse. The Vulgate collapses several distinct actions (va‑yechatte', "he purified," and va‑yeqaddeshehu, "he consecrated it") into a single ablative phrase "quo expiato et sanctificato" ("which having been expiated and sanctified"), a more compact syntactic construction than the sequential Hebrew verb chain. The Vulgate also renders le‑khapper not as a purpose infinitive attached to a following clause but folds it into the participial phrase describing the altar's prior state, differing from the Hebrew's forward-looking purpose construction "in order to atone on it."