Numbers 18:17

Summary

Numbers 18:17 excludes the firstborn of cattle, sheep, and goats from the redemption procedure described in the surrounding verses: these animals cannot be bought back for money because they are holy. Instead, their blood is to be sprinkled on the altar and their fat burned as a fire offering to Yehovah.

Key words

• 'akh ("only", H0389) — a restrictive adverb opening the verse, marking a limitation or exception to what precedes it (the redemption of firstborn humans and unclean animals discussed earlier in the chapter).
• tifDeh ("you will redeem", H6299) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); expresses a prohibition addressed to a single male addressee (Aaron, per the chapter's context).
• Qodesh ("holy thing", H6944G) — masculine singular noun functioning as predicate to the pronoun Hem ("they", H1992); together they form a nominal clause "holy [are] they," stating the animals' status rather than an action.
• tizRok ("you will sprinkle", H2236) — qal imperfect, continuing the second-person singular address, describing the priest's handling of the blood dam ("blood", H1818) with the third-person plural possessive suffix "their."
• takTir ("you will make smoke", H6999A) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, indicating that the subject causes the fat chelev ("fat", H2459) to go up in smoke on the altar.

What the text says

The verse opens with 'akh ("only," H0389), a particle that sets apart the three animals named — shor ("cow," H7794), kesev ("sheep," H3775), and 'ez ("goat," H5795) — each introduced by bekhor ("firstborn of," H1060) in construct form, linking "firstborn" grammatically to each animal. This construct chain, repeated three times with the conjunction 'ov ("or," H0176A), creates a list of exceptions to a redemption rule stated earlier in the chapter.

The clause lo' tifDeh ("you will not redeem," H3808 + H6299) uses a second-person masculine singular imperfect verb, addressing an individual (contextually Aaron) with a durative or habitual prohibition — this is not a one-time command but an ongoing legal stipulation. The following words, Qodesh Hem ("holy [are] they," H6944G + H1992), form a verbless nominal clause: no verb "to be" appears in Hebrew, but the juxtaposition of the predicate noun and the pronoun conveys a state of being, explaining why redemption is barred.

The final section switches to two more imperfect verbs, tizRok ("you will sprinkle," H2236) and takTir ("you will make smoke," H6999A), the latter in the hiphil stem, marking a causative action — the subject causes the fat to go up in smoke rather than performing the burning directly with his own body. The phrase Reiach niChoach ("odor of soothing," H7381 + H5207) is itself a construct chain describing the effect of the offering, directed la-Yehovah ("to Yehovah," H3068G).

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the nominal clause Qodesh Hem as "quia sanctificata sunt Domino" ("because they are sanctified to the Lord"), adding "to the Lord" (Domino) and a causal conjunction ("quia") not present in the Hebrew construct, which simply states "holy [are] they" without specifying to whom. The LXX similarly reads "ἅγιά ἐστιν" ("holy they are"), closer to the Hebrew's brevity, without the added dative phrase found in the Vulgate.