Leviticus 9:20

Summary

The verse describes two ritual actions: an unspecified plural group places the fat portions on the breasts of the sacrificial animal, and then a singular subject burns those fats on the altar. The action is part of the sequence of offerings performed by Aaron and his sons in this chapter.

Key words

• yaSimu ("they placed", H7760H) — qal narrative form, 3rd person masculine plural, indicating multiple actors performing the placement.
• chalaVim ("fats", H2459) — masculine plural noun, repeated in both clauses (words 5 and 12), referring to the fat portions taken from the sacrifice.
• chaZot ("breasts", H2373) — feminine plural noun, the anatomical location where the fat portions are laid before burning.
• yakTer ("he made smoke", H6999A) — hiphil narrative form, 3rd person masculine singular (causative of qatar, "to smoke"), meaning the subject caused the fat to go up in smoke — a technical term for the sacrificial burning act.
• ha-mizbeCha(h) ("toward the altar", H4196 + H9011) — the noun mizbeach with a directional he suffix, marking motion or orientation toward the altar rather than simple location.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two clauses joined by the narrative vav (word 1 and word 9), producing a sequential "and then... and then..." structure typical of ritual narration. The first clause has a plural verb, yaSimu ("they placed"), whose subject is not named in this verse but continues from the plural actors of the preceding context. The second clause shifts to a singular verb, yakTer ("he made smoke"), marking a change in subject from a group action to an individual one — the placement is collective, but the burning is performed by one person.

The hiphil stem of yakTer is causative: the subject does not simply burn the fat but causes it to become smoke, reflecting the technical vocabulary of Levitical sacrifice where qatar consistently denotes this transformation of offering into smoke. The directional he attached to mizbeach ("altar") indicates movement toward the altar rather than a static location, reinforcing the sense of a physical carrying/placing action culminating in the burning event.

Differences between versions

The subject-agreement pattern differs between the Hebrew and the Septuagint. In the Hebrew, the first verb (yaSimu, "they placed") is plural and the second (yakTer, "he made smoke") is singular. The LXX reverses this: epethēken ("he placed") is singular, while anēnegkan ("they brought up") is plural. The Vulgate renders the first verb as plural (posuerunt, "they placed") but uses an impersonal/passive construction for the second clause (cremati essent, "had been burned"), avoiding a specified singular or plural subject altogether.