What Does Leviticus 4:11 Mean?
And the skin of the young bull, and all its flesh, with its head, and with its legs, and its inward parts, and its dung,
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 the skin of the bullock, and all his flesh, with his head, and with his legs, and his inwards, and his dung,THE KEY
The word for the bull’s inwards belongs to the same Hebrew root family as “draw near” and “offering,” placing its hidden interior inside the language of approach.
THE MEANING
The verse names the body in full: skin, flesh, head, legs, inner parts, and waste. Nothing hidden or distasteful is left out of its account.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that only the visible or presentable parts belong in a complete accounting of the body.
THE ROOT
קִרְבּוֹ
qirbō
GROWS FROM
ק־ר־ב
q-r-b
Approach, come near.
English “inwards” sounds like a plain anatomical label, but qirbō belongs to the q-r-b word family that also gives qarab, “draw near,” and qorban, “offering.” The verse names the hidden interior with the same root that carries approach and offering, alongside every external part.
ALSO GROWS
qereb: Interior, midst.
קֶרֶב
This is the noun for what is within, close in form to the word for the bull’s inwards.
qarab: Approach, draw near.
קָרַב
The same root family holds the movement of coming near.
qorban: Offering; that which is brought near.
קָרְבָּן
This branch makes the root’s language of nearness part of the vocabulary of an offering.
THE PATTERN
The sacrificial body is named and accounted for whole, down to its interior and waste, before it is taken outside the camp.
And he carries the whole young bull out beyond the camp to a clean place, to the pouring place of the ashes, and he burns it on wood with fire, and it is burned upon the pouring place of the ashes.But the flesh of the young bull, and his skin, and his dung, you burn with fire outside the camp. It is an offering for falling short.For the bodies of those living ones, whose blood is carried into the set-apart places by the high priest for falling short, are burned outside the camp.THE THREAD
But for me, drawing near to God is good; I have set my shelter in the Lord LORD, to recount all your works.The Hebrew for “draw near” in this psalm comes from the same q-r-b root family as qirbō, “its inwards,” in Leviticus 4:11. The shared root lets inwardness and approach resonate together while this verse names the interior as part of the whole body.
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