Leviticus 8:19

Summary

The verse narrates two consecutive actions in the ordination ritual: an unnamed subject cuts the throat of the sacrificial animal, and Moses sprinkles its blood on all sides of the altar. The Hebrew names Moses explicitly only once, though he is understood as agent of both actions.

Key words

• va-yishchat ("and he cut the throat", H7819A) — narrative qal verb with no explicit grammatical subject stated in this clause; the actor is only identified later in the sentence.
• va-yizroq ("and he sprinkled", H2236) — second narrative qal verb, followed immediately by the proper name Mosheh, which retroactively supplies the subject for both this verb and the previous one.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper noun functioning as the sole named subject in the verse, positioned between the two verbs rather than at the start of the sentence.
• et-ha-dam ("the blood", H0853 + H1818) — direct object marker plus definite noun, marking "the blood" as the specific, definite object of the sprinkling action.
• saviv ("all around", H5439H) — a common-gender noun used adverbially, describing the spatial distribution of the sprinkled blood around the altar's perimeter.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence chains two verbs with the narrative vav ("and then..."): va-yishchat ("and he cut the throat") and va-yizroq ("and he sprinkled"). Grammatically, the first verb has no subject noun attached to it within its own clause — the subject "Moses" appears only after the second verb, syntactically linking to both actions retroactively. This structure means the reader must supply the same agent (Moses) for the slaughtering as for the sprinkling, based on word order rather than repeated naming.

The object of the sprinkling is marked precisely: et-ha-dam uses the direct object marker et (H0853, untranslated) before the definite noun "the blood" (ha-dam), specifying exactly what is sprinkled — not blood in general, but the blood of the animal just slaughtered. The location is given as al-ha-mizbeach saviv — "on the altar, all around" — where saviv (H5439H) functions adverbially to indicate that the sprinkling covered the altar's full perimeter, not a single spot.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (LXXSWETE) names Μωυσῆς ("Moses") twice — once as subject of ἔσφαξεν ("he slaughtered") and again with προσέχεεν ("he poured/sprinkled") — making explicit what the Hebrew leaves implicit through word order. The LXX also adds τὸν κριόν ("the ram") as the explicit object of the slaughtering verb, an object not present in the Hebrew clause itself (though established by prior context). The Vulgate (VULCLEM) uses the pronoun "eum" ("him/it") for the object of "immolavit" rather than naming the ram, and does not name Moses until "fudit sanguinem ejus" ("poured his blood"), paralleling the Hebrew's delayed naming pattern but with a pronoun where Hebrew has no stated object at all for the first verb.