Numbers 5:25

Summary

The verse describes three consecutive priestly actions: the priest takes the grain offering of jealousy from the woman's hand, waves it before Yehovah, and brings it near to the altar. The sequence marks a procedural stage in the ritual, moving the offering from the woman's possession into the sacrificial process.

Key words

• la.Kach ("he will take", H3947) — qal sequential perfect; continues the narrative chain begun in prior verses, indicating the next required act.
• min.Chat ("offering of", H4503) — feminine singular construct, linking the grain offering directly to ha.qqe.na.'Ot ("the jealousies"), naming the offering by its ritual purpose.
• qe.na.'Ot ("jealousies", H7068) — feminine plural noun; the plural form gives the offering its technical designation, distinct from ordinary grain offerings.
• he.Nif ("he will wave", H5130) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect; the priest causes the offering to move in the waving gesture before Yehovah.
• hik.Riv ("he will bring near", H7126) — hiphil sequential perfect; denotes the technical act of presenting the offering at the altar, completing the sequence of la.Kach → he.Nif → hik.Riv.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built entirely on a chain of three sequential perfect verbs — la.Kach, he.Nif, hik.Riv — each introduced by the narrative ve ("and"). This verbal chain structure signals a fixed procedural order: taking, waving, then bringing near. All three verbs share the same grammatical subject, ha.ko.Hen ("the priest", H3548), which is stated once and carries through the rest of the verse.

The offering itself is named through a construct chain: min.Chat ha.qqe.na.'Ot ("offering of the jealousies"), where the construct form min.Chat binds the noun "offering" tightly to its defining term "jealousies," producing a technical ritual label rather than a generic phrase like "an offering that is jealous." The direct object marker 'et appears three times (before the offering, before "the offering" again, and as the suffixed pronoun -ah on 'o.Ta meaning "her/it"), each time marking the noun or pronoun receiving the verb's action without adding independent meaning of its own. The final verb, hik.Riv, takes the suffixed direct object 'o.Ta ("it/her") referring back to the offering, and is followed by the preposition 'el ("to") plus ha.miz.Be.ach ("the altar"), specifying the destination of the action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders he.Nif ("he will wave", H5130) with ἐπιθήσει ("he will place/put upon"), differing from the Hebrew's specific waving gesture; the Vulgate's elevabit ("he will lift up") also diverges from the wave-motion sense present in the Hebrew verb. The Vulgate adds a clause not present in the Hebrew or LXX ("ita dumtaxat ut prius," roughly "in the same way as before"), extending the sentence beyond what the Hebrew states at this point.