Leviticus 8:21

Summary

Leviticus 8:21 describes Moses washing the entrails and legs of the ram with water, then burning the entire animal on the altar. The verse closes with a formulaic double explanation of the offering's nature and a note of compliance with divine command.

Key words

• rachatz ("he washed", H7364) — qal perfect, a simple completed action describing the washing of specific body parts before burning.
• yaqter ("he made smoke", H6999A) — hiphil narrative form (causative), indicating Moses caused the ram to go up in smoke; the hiphil stem marks this as an induced action rather than something happening on its own.
• 'olah ("[was] a burnt offering", H5930A) — feminine singular noun, one of two nominal labels applied to the offering via the pronoun hu' ("it", H1931).
• re'ach nichoach ("odor of soothing", H7381 + H5207) — construct chain, literally "odor of soothing/quieting," describing the effect of the offering's smoke.
• tzivah ("he had commanded", H6680) — piel perfect, an intensive stem verb marking Yehovah's prior directive that the action now fulfills.

What the text says

The verse opens with two direct objects — ha-qerev ("the entrails", H7130H) and ha-kera'ayim ("the legs", H3767) — placed before the verb rachatz ("he washed", H7364). This front-positioning of the objects (rather than verb-first, which is more typical in Biblical Hebrew narrative) puts emphasis on what was washed before naming the action. The subject of the washing is not stated in this clause but is understood from context (Moses, named explicitly in the next clause).

The narrative then shifts to the vav-consecutive form va-yaqter ("and he made smoke", H6999A), a hiphil verb explicitly naming Moses as subject, governing the object kol ha-'ayil ("all the ram", H3605 + H0352A) — the entire ram, not just parts of it. The directional he suffix on ha-mizbecha ("toward the altar", H4196 + H9011) indicates motion or destination, marking the altar as the endpoint of the smoke's ascent.

The final section uses two parallel nominal clauses, each built with the pronoun hu' ("it", H1931) functioning as a copula: "'olah hu'" ("it [was] a burnt offering") and "'isheh hu'" ("it [was] a fire offering"). Each noun is unmarked for tense, and the pronoun links subject to predicate without a verb "to be." The phrase le-reach nichoach ("to an odor of soothing", H7381 + H5207) is a construct chain attached to the first clause, describing the offering's effect. The final clause repeats the formula ka'asher tzivah YHWH et-Moshe ("as Yehovah had commanded Moses"), using the piel perfect tzivah (H6680) to mark the command as prior to and governing the narrated action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yaqter ("he made smoke", H6999A) with anēnegken ("he brought up/offered"), a verb of offering rather than one specifically depicting smoke or burning. The Hebrew text uses two separate nominal labels, 'olah ("burnt offering") and 'isheh ("fire offering"), each with its own hu' ("it") pronoun; the LXX preserves two terms (holokautōma and karpōma) similarly bound to two clauses. The Vulgate collapses this into a single clause, "esset holocaustum suavissimi odoris Domino" ("it was a burnt offering of a most sweet odor to the Lord"), omitting a distinct rendering equivalent to 'isheh ("fire offering", H0801) as a separate term.