1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Charge Aaron and his sons, saying, ‘This is the teaching of the burnt offering. It is the very burnt offering over its flame on the altar all night till morning, and the fire of the altar shall keep burning on in it. 3And the priest shall wear his linen garb and linen breeches he shall wear on his body, and he shall take away the ashes that the fire consumes from the burnt offering on the altar and put them beside the altar. 4And he shall take off his clothes and wear other clothes and take out the ashes beyond the camp to a clean place. 5And the fire on the altar shall keep burning on it, it shall not go out, and the priest shall burn wood on it morning after morning and lay out on it the burnt offering and turn the fat part of the communion offerings to smoke. 6A perpetual fire shall keep burning on the altar. It shall not go out.
7“‘And this is the teaching of the grain offering. The sons of Aaron are to bring it forward before the LORD in front of the altar. 8And a handful of it shall be removed, from the semolina of the grain offering and from its oil, with all the frankincense that is on the grain offering, and it shall be turned to smoke on the altar, a fragrant odor, its token to the LORD. 9And what is left of it Aaron and his sons shall eat, as flatcakes it shall be eaten, in a holy place, in the court of the Tent of Meeting they shall eat it. 10It shall not be baked leavened. As their share I have given it from my fire offerings. It is holy of holies, like the offense offering and like the guilt offering. 11Every male among the sons of Aaron shall eat it, a perpetual portion for your generations from the fire offerings of the LORD. Whatever touches them shall become holy.’”
12And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 13“This is the offering of Aaron and his sons which they shall bring forward to the LORD on the day he is anointed: a tenth of an ephah of semolina as a perpetual grain offering, half of it in the morning and half of it in the evening. 14On a griddle in oil it shall be done, soaked through you shall bring it, as a grain offering of baked pieces you shall bring it forward, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 15And the anointed priest, successor among his sons, shall do it, a perpetual portion for the LORD, it shall be entirely turned to smoke. 16And every priest’s grain offering shall be entire, it shall not be eaten.”
17And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 18“Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘This is the teaching of the offense offering. In the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered, the offense offering shall be slaughtered before the LORD. It is holy of holies. 19The priest performing it as an offense offering shall eat it. In a holy place it shall be eaten, in the court of the Tent of Meeting. 20Whatever touches its flesh shall become holy, and when some of its blood is spattered on a garment, that which has been spattered shall be laundered in a holy place. 21And an earthen vessel in which it is boiled shall be broken, and if it was boiled in a copper vessel, it shall be scoured and rinsed with water. 22Every male among the priests shall eat it. It is holy of holies. 23And every offense offering from which blood is brought into the Tent of Meeting to atone in the sanctum shall not be eaten. In fire it shall be burned.’”
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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2. This is the teaching. Leviticus repeatedly introduces a particular set of regulations with the phrase “this is the teaching [torah],” this being the first occurrence. “Teaching” is, in fact, the primary meaning of torah, and this translation preserves that sense throughout, though in these contexts, “procedure,” “ritual,” “regulation,” and similar terms used in sundry modern English versions are all justified. In any case, the reiteration of the term is a strong verbal symptom of how Leviticus differs formally from other biblical books. This is primarily a book of instructions, and one of its Hebrew names, torat kohanim, could aptly be translated as “Priestly Instructions.”
It is the very burnt offering. The semantic force of the Hebrew phrase hiʾ haʿolah is to emphasize the noun (ʿolah) that follows the indicative pronoun (hiʾ).
flame. The literal sense is “place of burning” (though the translation “hearth” proposed by some modern scholars sounds altogether too domestic for a cultic setting). Stylistically, this entire passage about the burnt offering is dominated by terms related to burning, as if to focus the idea of a sacred fire that burns perpetually, coordinated with the sacrificial fire that entirely consumes the burnt offering. The word for burnt offering or holocaust, ʿolah, is not derived from a root that means “to burn” but rather from the verb “to go up,” which, however, is metonymically linked to burning by suggesting the idea that the whole sacrifice “goes up” in smoke. Fire and blood are the two substances that are the key to the sacrificial rites, but the present passage gives preeminence to the nexus between cult and fire—the element associated with God’s fiery epiphany at Sinai and with his first appearance to Moses in the burning bush. Hence an altar with a fire that “shall not go out.”
9. Aaron and his sons shall eat. It must be kept in mind that in this agrarian society, the landless members of the tribe of Levi needed the cult for the bread and butter (or, more literally, the bread and meat) of their physical sustenance. Throughout the sacrificial regulations, provisions are made for setting aside portions to be consumed by the priests.
10. It is holy of holies. As elsewhere, this structure is a way of indicating a superlative in biblical idiom, the sense being: supremely holy, sacrosanct.
11. Whatever touches them shall become holy. It is also possible to construe this sentence, as Baruch Levine does, to mean: whoever touches them shall be holy (i.e., no person is allowed to touch the flatcakes made from the grain offerings who is not “holy,” or a member of the priestly caste). Jacob Milgrom, however, makes a persuasive case on philological and other grounds that the reference is to objects rather than to persons. What is involved, then, is an idea some scholars have described as a “contagion” of holiness symmetrical with the more common idea of a contagion of impurity. Objects that come in contact with consecrated substances such as the grain offering themselves become consecrated and can no longer be used for profane purposes.
15. successor among his sons. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “in his stead among his sons,” but “in his stead” is regularly used in references to monarchy to indicate the successor to the throne, and that must be the meaning here.
a perpetual portion for the LORD. Although the use of the noun ḥoq, “portion,” may be a linguistic fossil harking back to a premonotheistic era when the sacrifice was conceived as a way of offering food to the gods, its introduction here is more probably dictated by the desire to use a complementary term: one part of the grain offering was reserved for the priests to be eaten as their portion, and so the remaining part burned on the altar is described as “a perpetual portion for the LORD.”
16. every priest’s grain offering shall be entire. That is, when a priest presents a grain offering on his own behalf rather than on behalf of a layperson, no part is to be reserved for his consumption, all of it must be burned on the altar.