Leviticus 9:22

Summary

The verse narrates Aaron raising his hands toward the people and blessing them, then descending after completing the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the peace offerings. The action follows a sequence of three consecutive narrative verbs describing the closing gestures of the sacrificial ritual.

Key words

• yisa ("he lifted up", H5375) — qal narrative verb, marking the first sequential action: the physical raising of the hands.
• yadav ("his hands", H3027) — dual construct noun with pronominal suffix, showing the hands are grammatically paired ("hands of him"), reflecting the dual form typical of body parts occurring in twos.
• yevarekhem ("he blessed them", H1288) — piel narrative verb, an intensive stem form conveying the act of blessing as a completed, forceful action directed at the people.
• yered ("he came down", H3381) — qal narrative verb, the third link in the narrative chain, indicating Aaron's descent.
• me'asot ("from doing/offering", H6213) — qal infinitive with the preposition min ("from"), indicating the point from which the descent occurs — after the completion of the offerings.

What the text says

The verse is built on three narrative verbs joined by the vav-consecutive construction (va-yisa, va-yevarekhem, va-yered), each marked in the data as "narrative — and then...". This chain presents the actions as a sequential unit: Aaron lifts his hands, blesses the people, and descends. The dual noun yadav ("hands", H3027) appears in construct form with a pronominal suffix, a standard way Biblical Hebrew marks paired body parts without needing a separate word for "two."

The phrase me'asot ha-chattat ve-ha'olah ve-hashelamim uses the infinitive asot ("to do/in doing", H6213) governed by the preposition min ("from"), literally "from doing the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings." This construction ties Aaron's descent temporally to the completion of the three offerings, which are listed with the definite article (ha-chattat, ha'olah, ha-shelamim), marking them as the specific, already-established offerings referred to earlier in the chapter's ritual sequence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequence of offerings as τὸ περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας ("that concerning sin"), τὰ ὁλοκαυτώματα ("the whole burnt offerings," plural), and τὰ τοῦ σωτηρίου ("those of salvation/deliverance"), where the Hebrew uses singular ha-chattat and ha'olah and plural ha-shelamim (H8002). The Vulgate places the descent (descendit) at the very end of the sentence, after listing all three offerings with "completis hostiis" ("the sacrifices having been completed"), reordering the Hebrew's verb-first sequence (va-yered me'asot...) into a subordinate clause followed by the main verb.