Leviticus 7:28-38

Priestly Portions of Peace Offerings

7:28 Then the Lord spoke to Moses: ¹  7:29 “Tell the Israelites, ‘The one who presents his peace offering sacrifice to the Lord must bring his offering to the Lord from his peace offering sacrifice. 7:30 With his own hands he must bring the Lord’s gifts. He must bring the fat with the breast ²  to wave the breast as a wave offering before the Lord, ³  7:31 and the priest must offer the fat up in smoke on the altar, but the breast will belong to Aaron and his sons. 7:32 The right thigh you must give as a contribution offering ⁴  to the priest from your peace offering sacrifices. 7:33 The one from Aaron’s sons who presents the blood of the peace offering and fat will have the right thigh as his share, 7:34 for the breast of the wave offering and the thigh of the contribution offering I have taken from the Israelites out of their peace offering sacrifices and have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons from the people of Israel as a perpetual allotted portion.’” ⁵ 

7:35 This is the allotment of Aaron and the allotment of his sons from the Lord’s gifts on the day Moses ⁶  presented them to serve as priests ⁷  to the Lord. 7:36 This is what the Lord commanded to give to them from the Israelites on the day Moses ⁸  anointed them ⁹  – a perpetual allotted portion throughout their generations. ¹⁰ 

Summary of Sacrificial Regulations in Leviticus 6:8-7:36

7:37 This is the law ¹¹  for the burnt offering, the grain offering, ¹²  the sin offering, the guilt offering, the ordination offering, ¹³  and the peace offering sacrifice, 7:38 which the Lord commanded Moses on Mount Sinai on the day he commanded the Israelites to present their offerings to the Lord in the wilderness of Sinai.

[7:28]  ¹ sn See the note on Lev 6:8 [6:1 HT].

[7:30]  ² tn Heb “on the breast.”

[7:30]  ³ tc Many Hebrew mss and some versions (esp. the LXX) limit the offerings in the last part of this verse to the fat portions, specifically, the fat and the fat lobe of the liver (see the BHS footnote). The verse is somewhat awkward in Hebrew but nevertheless correct.

[7:32]  ³ tn Older English versions (e.g., KJV, ASV) translate this Hebrew term (תְּרוּמָה, tÿrumah) “heave offering,” derived from the idea of “to raise, to lift” found in the verbal root (cf. NAB “a raised offering”). “Contribution offering” is a better English rendering because it refers to something “taken out from” (i.e., “lifted up from”; cf. the Hebrew term הֵרִים (herim) in, e.g., Lev 2:9; 4:8, etc.) the offering as a special contribution to the specific priest who presided over the offering procedures in any particular instance (see the next verse and R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 4:335-37). Cf. TEV “as a special contribution”; NCV, NLT “as a gift.”

[7:34]  ⁴ tn Or “a perpetual regulation”; cf. NASB “as their due forever”; NRSV “as a perpetual due”; NLT “their regular share.”

[7:35]  ⁵ tn Heb “the day he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[7:35]  ⁶ tn Heb “in the day of he presented them to serve as priests to the Lord.” The grammar here is relatively unusual. First, the verb “presented” appears to be in the perfect rather than the infinitive (but see GKC 531), the latter being normal in such temporal expressions. Second, the active verb form appears to be used as a passive plural (“they were presented”). However, if it is translated active and singular then Moses would be the subject: “on the day he [Moses] offered them [Aaron and his sons].”

[7:36]  ⁶ tn Heb “the day he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[7:36]  ⁷ tn Heb “which the Lord commanded to give to them in the day he anointed them from the children of Israel.” Thus v. 36 is tied syntactically to v. 35 (see the note there).

[7:36]  ⁸ tn Heb “for your generations”; cf. NIV “for the generations to come”; TEV “for all time to come.”

[7:37]  ⁷ sn The Hebrew term translated “law” (תוֹרָה [torah]) occurs up to this point in the book only in Lev 6:9 [6:2 HT], 14 [7 HT], 25 [18 HT], 7:1, 7, 11, and here in 7:37. This suggests that Lev 7:37-38 is a summary of only this section of the book (i.e., Lev 6:8 [6:1 HT]-7:36), not all of Lev 1-7.

[7:37]  ⁸ tc In the MT only “the grain offering” lacks a connecting ו (vav). However, many Hebrew , Smr, LXX, Syriac, and some mss of Tg. Onq. have the ו (vav) on “the grain offering” as well.

[7:37]  ⁹ sn The inclusion of the “ordination offering” (מִלּוּאִים, milu’im; the term apparently comes from the notion of “filling [of the hand],” cf. Lev 8:33) here anticipates Lev 8. It is a kind of peace offering, as the regulations in Lev 8:22-32 will show (cf. Exod 29:19-34). In the context of the ordination ritual for the priests it fits into the sequence of offerings as a peace offering would: sin offering (Lev 8:14-17), burnt and grain offering (Lev 8:18-21), and finally peace (i.e., ordination) offering (Lev 8:22-32). Moreover, in this case, Moses received the breast of the ordination offering as his due since he was the presiding priest over the sacrificial procedures (Lev 8:29; cf. Lev 7:30-31), while Aaron and his sons ate the portions that would have been consumed by the common worshipers in a regular peace offering procedure (Exod 29:31-34; cf. Lev 7:15-18). For a general introduction to the peace offering see the note on Lev 3:1.