Leviticus 9:12

Summary

The verse narrates three sequential actions performed by Aaron: he slaughters the burnt offering, his sons bring him the blood, and he sprinkles it around the altar. The syntax uses a chain of narrative verb forms (vav-consecutive) typical of Hebrew ritual narration.

Key words

• va-yishChat ("and he cut the throat of", H7819A) — qal narrative form; the subject (Aaron, established earlier in the chapter) is not restated but carried by the verb form itself.
• ha-'oLah ("the burnt offering", H5930A) — definite noun, feminine singular, marked as direct object by 'et (H0853); the article ties it to the offering already introduced in the chapter.
• va-yamtzi'u ("and they brought forward", H4672) — hiphil (causative) narrative form, plural; the sons of Aaron are the grammatical subject causing the blood to arrive/be presented.
• beNei 'AhaRon ("sons of Aaron", H1121A + H0175) — construct chain, identifying the plural subject of the causative verb.
• va-yizreKehu ("and he sprinkled it", H2236) — qal narrative verb with a pronominal suffix (-hu, "it") referring back to ha-dam ("the blood", H1818); the object is folded directly into the verb form.

What the text says

The verse is built entirely on the narrative vav-consecutive chain (va-yishchat... va-yamtzi'u... va-yizrekehu), which in Biblical Hebrew narrative sequences events one after another without needing separate connective words like "then" — each verb form itself signals "and next, this happened." This creates a tight, staccato progression: slaughter, presentation, sprinkling.

Grammatically notable is the shift in verbal stem: yishchat ("he cut the throat of") and yizrekehu ("he sprinkled it") are both qal (simple active) forms with Aaron as implied subject, while yamtzi'u ("they brought forward") is hiphil (causative), marking a shift in subject to "the sons of Aaron" (beNei 'AhaRon, H1121A + H0175). The causative stem here conveys that the sons cause the blood to reach Aaron, rather than performing the sprinkling themselves — the text distinguishes who kills, who delivers, and who applies the blood to the altar.

The suffixes -o on 'eLav ("to him", H0413 + H9033) and -hu on yizreKehu ("he sprinkled it") economically encode "him" (Aaron) and "it" (the blood) without repeating the nouns, a common feature of Hebrew narrative economy that expanded translations must supply as full pronouns or repeated nouns.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yamtzi'u ("they brought forward", H4672, hiphil) with prosēnegkan ("they offered/brought"), and adds kai ("and") before "the blood," slightly restructuring the clause compared to the Hebrew's direct object construction with 'et-ha-dam. The Vulgate's obtulerunt ei filii sui ("his sons offered to him") shifts the relationship term, using filii sui ("his sons") where the Hebrew has beNei 'AhaRon ("sons of Aaron", explicitly naming Aaron rather than using a possessive pronoun).