Leviticus 4:5

4:5 Then that high priest must take some of the blood ¹  of the bull and bring it to the Meeting Tent.

Leviticus 14:15

14:15 The priest will then take some of the log of olive oil and pour it into his own left hand. ² 

Leviticus 14:49

14:49 Then he ³  is to take two birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric, and some twigs of hyssop ⁴  to decontaminate ⁵  the house,

Leviticus 16:7

16:7 He must then take the two goats ⁶  and stand them before the Lord at the entrance of the Meeting Tent,

Leviticus 4:25

4:25 Then the priest must take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and he must pour out the rest of its blood at the base of the altar of burnt offering.

Leviticus 4:30

4:30 Then the priest must take some of its blood with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and he must pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar.

Leviticus 4:34

4:34 Then the priest must take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and he must pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar.

Leviticus 14:4

14:4 then the priest will command that two live clean birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric, ⁷  and some twigs of hyssop ⁸  be taken up ⁹  for the one being cleansed. ¹⁰ 

Leviticus 14:12

14:12 “The priest is to take one male lamb ¹¹  and present it for a guilt offering ¹²  along with the log of olive oil and present them as a wave offering before the Lord. ¹³ 

Leviticus 14:24

14:24 and the priest is to take the male lamb of the guilt offering and the log of olive oil and wave them ¹⁴  as a wave offering before the Lord.

Leviticus 16:12

16:12 and take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the Lord ¹⁵  and a full double handful of finely ground fragrant incense, ¹⁶  and bring them inside the veil-canopy. ¹⁷ 

Leviticus 16:14

16:14 Then he is to take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the eastern face of the atonement plate, ¹⁸  and in front of the atonement plate he is to sprinkle some of the blood seven times with his finger. ¹⁹ 

Leviticus 16:18

16:18 “Then ²⁰  he is to go out to the altar which is before the Lord and make atonement for it. He is to take ²¹  some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it all around on the horns of the altar.

Leviticus 14:14

14:14 Then the priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, ²²  on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe ²³  of his right foot.

Leviticus 14:21

The Eighth Day Atonement Rituals for the Poor Person

14:21 “If the person is poor and does not have sufficient means, ²⁴  he must take one male lamb as a guilt offering for a wave offering to make atonement for himself, one-tenth of an ephah of choice wheat flour mixed with olive oil for a grain offering, a log of olive oil, ²⁵ 

Leviticus 14:25

14:25 Then he is to slaughter the male lamb of the guilt offering, and the priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, ²⁶  on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe ²⁷  of his right foot.

Leviticus 14:51

14:51 He must then take the piece of cedar wood, the twigs of hyssop, the scrap of crimson fabric, and the live bird, and dip them in the blood of the slaughtered bird and in the fresh water, and sprinkle the house seven times.

[4:5]  ¹ tn Heb “from the blood of the bull” (and similarly throughout this chapter).

[14:15]  ² tn Heb “And the priest…shall pour on the left hand of the priest.” As the Rabbis observe, the repetition of “priest” as the expressed subject of both verbs in this verse may suggest that two priests were involved in this ritual (see m. Nega’im 14:8, referred to by J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:852), but the seemingly unnecessary repetition of “priest” in several verses throughout the chapter argues against this (see esp. vv. 3, 14, 18, 20, 24, and 26). Moreover, in this case, “priest” may be repeated to avoid confusing the priest’s hand with that of the one being cleansed (cf. v. 14).

[14:49]  ³ tn The pronoun “he” refers to the priest mentioned in the previous verse.

[14:49]  ⁴ tn Regarding these ritual materials, see the note on v. 4 above.

[14:49]  ⁵ tn Regarding the Piel of חָטָא (khata’, cf. v. 52) meaning to “decontaminate” or “perform a decontamination,” see the notes on Lev 8:15 and 9:15.

[16:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “the two he-goats,” referred to as “two he-goats of goats” in v. 5.

[14:4]  ⁵ tn The term rendered here “crimson fabric” consists of two Hebrew words and means literally, “crimson of worm” (in this order only in Lev 14:4, 6, 49, 51, 52 and Num 19:6; for the more common reverse order, “worm of crimson,” see, e.g., the colored fabrics used in making the tabernacle, Exod 25:4, etc.). This particular “worm” is an insect that lives on the leaves of palm trees, the eggs of which are the source for a “crimson” dye used to color various kinds of cloth (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 86). That a kind of dyed “fabric” is intended, not just the dye substance itself, is made certain by the dipping of it along with the other ritual materials listed here into the blood and water mixture for sprinkling on the person being cleansed (Lev 14:6; cf. also the burning of it in the fire of the red heifer in Num 19:6). Both the reddish color of cedar wood and the crimson colored fabric seem to correspond to the color of blood and may, therefore, symbolize either “life,” which is in the blood, or the use of blood to “make atonement” (see, e.g., Gen 9:4 and Lev 17:11). See further the note on v. 7 below.

[14:4]  ⁶ sn Twigs of hyssop (probably one or several species of marjoram thymus), a spice and herb plant that grows out of walls in Palestine (see 1 Kgs 4:33 [5:13 HT], HALOT 27 s.v. אֵזוֹב, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 195), were particularly leafy and therefore especially useful for sprinkling the purifying liquid (cf. vv. 5-7). Many of the details of the ritual procedure are obscure. It has been proposed, for example, that the “cedar wood” was a stick to which the hyssop was bound with the crimson material to make a sort of sprinkling instrument (Hartley, 195). In light of the burning of these three materials as part of the preparation of the ashes of the red heifer in Num 19:5-6, however, this seems unlikely.

[14:4]  ⁷ tn The MT reads literally, “And the priest shall command and he shall take.” Clearly, the second verb (“and he shall take”) contains the thrust of the priest’s command, which suggests the translation “that he take” (cf. also v. 5a). Since the priest issues the command here, he cannot be the subject of the second verb because he cannot be commanding himself to “take” up these ritual materials. Moreover, since the ritual is being performed “for the one being cleansed,” the antecedent of the pronoun “he” cannot refer to him. The LXX, Smr, and Syriac versions have the third person plural here and in v. 5a, which corresponds to other combinations with the verb וְצִוָּה (vÿtsivvah) “and he (the priest) shall command” in this context (see Lev 13:54; 14:36, 40). This suggests an impersonal (i.e., “someone shall take” and “someone shall slaughter,” respectively) or perhaps even passive rendering of the verbs in 14:4, 5 (i.e., “there shall be taken” and “there shall be slaughtered,” respectively). The latter option has been chosen here.

[14:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “the one cleansing himself” (i.e., Hitpael participle of טָהֵר, taher, “to be clean”).

[14:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “And the priest shall take the one lamb.”

[14:12]  ⁷ tn See the note on Lev 5:15 above. The primary purpose of the “guilt offering” (אָשָׁם, ’asham) was to “atone” (כִּפֶּר, kipper, “to make atonement,” see v. 18 below and the note on Lev 1:4) for “trespassing” on the Lord’s “holy things,” whether sacred objects or sacred people. It is, therefore, closely associated with the reconsecration of the Lord’s holy people as, for example, here and in the case of the corpse contaminated Nazirite (Num 6:11b-12). Since the nation of Israel was “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” to the Lord (Exod 19:6; cf. the blood splashed on all the people in Exod 24:8), the skin diseased person was essentially a member of the “holy nation” who had been expelled from the community. Therefore, he or she had been desecrated and the guilt offering was essential to restoring him or her to the community. In fact, the manipulation of blood and oil in the guilt offering ritual procedure for the healed person (see vv. 14-18 below) is reminiscent of that employed for the ordination offering in the consecration of the holy Aaronic priests of the nation (Exod 29:19-21; Lev 8:22-30).

[14:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “wave them [as] a wave offering before the Lord” (NAB similar). See the note on Lev 7:30 and the literature cited there. Other possible translations include “elevate them [as] an elevation offering before the Lord” (cf. NRSV) or “present them [as] a presentation offering before the Lord.” To be sure, the actual physical “waving” of a male lamb seems unlikely, but some waving gesture may have been performed in the presentation of the offering (cf. also the “waving” of the Levites as a “wave offering” in Num 8:11, etc.).

[14:24]  ⁷ tn Heb “and the priest shall wave them.” In the present translation “priest” is not repeated a second time in the verse for stylistic reasons. With regard to the “waving” of the “wave offering,” see the note on v. 12 above.

[16:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “and he shall take the fullness of the censer, coals of fire, from on the altar from to the faces of the Lord.”

[16:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “and the fullness of the hollow of his two hands, finely ground fragrant incense.”

[16:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and he shall bring from house to the veil-canopy.”

[16:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “on the faces of the atonement plate toward the east.” Some have taken this to mean that the ark was stationed just behind the veil-canopy on the eastern side of the most holy place. Thus, the high priest would need to enter and walk toward the west end of the most holy place and then turn eastward in order to face the ark and sprinkle the blood in an eastward direction. The rendering here, however, requires that the ark was stationed on the western end, or perhaps in the middle of the area, so that as the priest entered he was already facing the ark and would sprinkle the blood on the eastern face of the atonement plate, in a westward direction (see, e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 239 versus J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:1032).

[16:14]  ¹⁰ sn Presumably in this case the blood was sprinkled seven times on the ground in front of the ark on which the atonement plate was mounted.

[16:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “And.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) indicates the sequence of events here.

[16:18]  ¹¹ tn Heb “And he shall take.”

[14:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and the priest shall put [literally ‘give’] on the lobe of the ear of the one being cleansed, the right one.”

[14:14]  ¹² tn The term for “big toe” (בֹּהֶן, bohen) is the same as that for “thumb.” It refers to the larger appendage on either the hand or the foot.

[14:21]  ¹² tn Heb “and his hand does not reach”; NAB, NRSV “and cannot afford so much (afford these NIV).”

[14:21]  ¹³ tn See the notes on v. 10 above.

[14:25]  ¹³ tn Heb “and the priest shall put [literally ‘give’] on the lobe of the ear of the one being cleansed, the right one.”

[14:25]  ¹⁴ tn The term for “big toe” (בֹּהֶן, bohen) is the same as that for “thumb.” It refers to the larger appendage on either the hand or the foot.