Numbers 19:5

Summary

The verse describes the burning of the heifer in the sight of the priest (or officiant), specifying that its hide, flesh, blood, and offal must all be consumed by fire. The Hebrew sentence frames this as one continuous act, opening and closing with forms of the same verb "to burn."

Key words

• sa.Raf ("he will burn", H8313) — qal sequential perfect, opening the verse; it continues the narrative sequence of ritual actions already begun in prior verses.
• pa.Rah ("heifer", H6510) — definite feminine singular noun, marked by the article ha ("the", H9009), identifying it as the specific animal already introduced in the chapter.
• 'ei.Na ("eyes", H5869H) — feminine dual construct noun with the suffix v ("his", H9023), forming the idiom "before his eyes," i.e., in his presence.
• pir.Sha ("offal", H6569) — masculine singular construct noun with suffix h ("its", H9024), naming the animal's undigested contents as part of what is burned.
• yis.Rof ("he will burn", H8313) — same root as the opening verb, but in imperfect form, closing the verse and framing the whole list of burned parts (hide, flesh, blood, offal) within a single repeated verbal action.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as an envelope structure: it begins with sa.Raf ("he will burn", H8313) and ends with yis.Rof ("he will burn", H8313), the same root appearing first as a sequential perfect and then as an imperfect. Between these two verbal forms sits the full list of what is burned — the heifer itself (pa.Rah, H6510), and then, introduced by three parallel construct chains marked with the object marker 'et (H0853), its skin ('o.Ra, H5785), its flesh (be.sa.Ra, H1320), and its blood (da.Ma, H1818), followed by the preposition 'al ("with", H5921A) governing "its offal" (pir.Sha, H6569). Each of these nouns carries the third-person feminine singular suffix h ("its/her", H9024), referring back to the heifer.

This structure — verb, object, verb again — means the Hebrew does not simply state "these parts were burned" as a single flat action but repeats the burning verb, framing the specification of parts as an expansion between two mentions of the same act. The phrase le-'ei.Nav ("to his eyes", H5869H + H9023) specifies that the burning of the heifer itself occurs in the presence of an observer (marked by the third-person masculine suffix "his"), while the subsequent burning of the parts (skin, flesh, blood, offal) is stated without repeating that qualifier, though it remains implied by the surrounding action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening verb as a plural, katakausousin ("they will burn"), where the Hebrew sa.Raf is third-person singular ("he will burn"). The Vulgate similarly uses the singular combu­ret ("he will burn"), aligning with the Hebrew subject. The LXX also renders pir.Sha ("offal", H6569) with kopros ("dung"), and the Vulgate uses fimo ("dung"), both narrowing the Hebrew term toward excrement specifically, while the Hebrew word denotes the animal's undigested intestinal contents more broadly.