What Does Leviticus 3:6 Mean?
If his drawing near as a wholeness offering to the LORD is from the flock, male or female, he brings it near whole.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And if his offering for a sacrifice of peace offering unto the LORD be of the flock; male or female, he shall offer it without blemish.THE KEY
The peace offering is named for wholeness, and what it presents must itself be whole.
THE MEANING
This offering is called a shelamim (שְׁלָמִים, wholeness offering), and its animal is to be tamim (תָּמִים, whole and sound). The verse holds the name and the animal’s condition together: wholeness takes a visible, undamaged form here.
THE ROOT
שְׁלָמִים
shelamim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be whole or complete, and to make whole.
“wholeness offering” in this verse is shelamim. The word carries more than quiet between enemies: it names wholeness and well-being. The offering’s name speaks of a complete state, a meaning echoed by the requirement that the animal itself be whole.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being, peace
שָׁלוֹם
This branch shows the broad sense carried by the offering’s name: well-being that is whole.
shalem: Whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the link between the offering’s name and the animal’s required condition explicit.
תָּמִים
tamim
GROWS FROM
תמם
t-m-m
To be complete, whole, or sound.
“whole” in this verse is tamim. The word makes the requirement concrete: the animal is to be sound, without defect. Its root also gives words for integrity and completeness, placing the physical condition within a wider language of wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
tom: Integrity, completeness
תֹּם
This branch shows that the root’s sense of wholeness can describe integrity as well as soundness.
tamam: To be complete or finished
תָּמַם
This verbal form carries the same movement toward completeness named by the requirement for a tamim animal.
THE PATTERN
An offering that signifies wholeness is specified as whole and without blemish.
Your lamb will be whole, a male of its first year. You will take it from the sheep or from the goats.And whoever brings near a wholeness offering to the LORD to set apart his vow, or a willing offering from the herd or the sheep, it shall be whole to be pleasing; no blemish shall be in it.but with the costly blood of the Anointed One, as of a lamb without blemish and without stain.THE THREAD
And whoever brings near a wholeness offering to the LORD to set apart his vow, or a willing offering from the herd or the sheep, it shall be whole to be pleasing; no blemish shall be in it.The word translated “perfect” is תָּמִים (tamim, whole and sound), the same word used here for “without blemish.” The shared word ties the offering of wholeness directly to the whole condition of what is offered.
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