Leviticus 9:8

Summary

Aaron approaches the altar and slaughters the calf designated as his own sin offering. The verse marks the beginning of Aaron's personal sacrificial actions after his consecration, using two sequential narrative verbs to describe his movement and the ritual act.

Key words

• va-yiqrav ("and he drew near", H7126G) — qal narrative verb marking the first sequential action: Aaron's physical approach to the altar.
• mizbeach ("altar", H4196) — masculine singular noun with definite article, the fixed cultic object toward which the action moves.
• va-yishchat ("and he slaughtered", H7819A) — second qal narrative verb, the technical term for cutting the throat of a sacrificial animal.
• egel ("calf of", H5695) — masculine singular noun in construct state, linking it grammatically to the following noun chattat.
• chattat ("sin offering", H2403H) — feminine singular noun specifying the category of sacrifice, in construct relation with egel.
• lo ("for himself", H9033 with H9005) — prepositional phrase with pronominal suffix, clarifying that this offering belongs to Aaron specifically.

What the text says

The verse is built on two sequential qal verbs joined by the narrative vav: va-yiqrav ("and he drew near") followed by va-yishchat ("and he slaughtered"). This chain structure presents Aaron's actions as a continuous, ordered sequence — first movement toward the altar, then the ritual cutting. Both verbs have Aaron as their unstated subject carried over from the explicit noun Aharon placed after the first verb.

The object of the slaughtering is expressed through a construct phrase: egel ha-chattat ("calf of the sin offering"), where egel ("calf") stands in construct relation to chattat ("sin offering"), indicating that the calf functions specifically as this category of offering rather than being merely modified by an adjective. The relative clause asher-lo ("which was for him" / "which belonged to him") that follows specifies whose offering this is — it uses the relative particle asher plus the preposition le with a third-person masculine singular pronominal suffix, literally "which [was] to/for him." This construction ties the offering directly to Aaron as the beneficiary or owner of this particular sacrificial act, distinguishing it from offerings made on behalf of others.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the relative clause asher-lo as pro peccato suo ("for his sin"), making explicit the connection to sin that the Hebrew phrase leaves implicit through the earlier noun chattat alone. The LXX's τὸ περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας ("the one concerning sin") similarly ties the phrase to sin rather than to Aaron himself, whereas the Hebrew asher-lo grammatically emphasizes the calf's connection to Aaron as its owner/beneficiary rather than restating the offering's category.