Leviticus 8:32

Summary

The verse instructs that whatever remains of the meat and bread (from the preceding ordination offerings) is to be burned in fire. It closes the ritual instructions for the ordination ceremony by specifying disposal of leftover consecrated food by burning.

Key words

• noTar ("remainder", H3498) — niphal participle, masculine singular, functioning substantively as "that which is left/remains"; the niphal form marks it as the passive result of an action (what remains after something else was done), not an active agent.
• baSar ("meat", H1320) — masculine singular noun, object of the preposition ba ("in the"), specifying one of the two substances left over.
• Lachem ("bread", H3899H) — masculine singular noun, paired with baSar via the conjunction u ("and"), naming the second leftover substance.
• 'esh ("fire", H784) — common gender singular noun, preceded by ba ("with/in the"), indicating the instrument/means by which the remainder is destroyed.
• tisRofu ("you will burn", H8313) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural; the imperfect aspect conveys an instruction or a command that projects into future/ongoing execution, addressed to a plural group (the officiants).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around a fronted subject clause: ve-ha-noTar ba-baSar u-va-Lachem ("and the remainder in the meat and in the bread"), which places emphasis on the leftover material before the verb appears. This word order — object/topic first, verb last — is common in Hebrew legal and ritual instruction, and it foregrounds what must be dealt with rather than who must do it. The verb tisRofu only appears at the very end of the sentence, delaying the action until the subject matter (the remainder) has been fully specified.

The niphal participle noTar does not name an agent; it describes the meat and bread as being "in a state of remaining," i.e., as leftover matter after the ordination rite. The two nouns baSar and Lachem are each preceded by the preposition ba ("in the"), marking them as the locations or categories in which the remainder is found — leftover in the meat, and leftover in the bread. The instrument of destruction, 'esh ("fire"), is likewise marked by ba, indicating the means by which the burning is to be carried out. The final verb, tisRofu, a qal imperfect second-person plural, directs the action to a group, consistent with the plural addressees of the ordination instructions in this chapter.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (ignis absumet, "fire will consume") makes fire the grammatical subject that consumes the remainder, whereas the Hebrew places 'esh ("fire") as the instrument within a command addressed to human agents (tisRofu, "you will burn"). The LXX text as given is incomplete but preserves τὸ καταλειφθὲν ("that which is left"), corresponding to the participle noTar, and lists τῶν κρεῶν καὶ τῶν ἄρτων ("of the meats and of the loaves") in the genitive, differing from the Hebrew's prepositional construction with ba.