What Does Leviticus 4:15 Mean?

And the elders of the assembly lean their hands upon the head of the young bull before the LORD, and the young bull is slaughtered before the LORD.

Leviticus 4:15 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock before the LORD: and the bullock shall be killed before the LORD.

THE KEY

The verb beneath “lay” means to lean upon or support, making the elders’ touch a bodily picture of communal responsibility before the bull is killed.

THE MEANING

When a community’s failure is brought before the LORD, its elders place their hands on the bull’s head, and the bull is killed in that same presence. Shared responsibility takes a visible, bodily form; its cost cannot remain abstract.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

A failure shared by a community can remain abstract, with no visible bearer or cost.

THE ROOT

וְסָמְכוּ

vesamkhu

GROWS FROM

סמך

s-m-k

To lean upon or support.

“lean their hands” in this verse is vesamkhu. English “lay” can sound like simple placement, but the Hebrew verb carries the sense of leaning onto or supporting. The elders’ contact makes the congregation’s relation to the offering physical and public before its death.

ALSO GROWS

somekh: One who supports or leans upon.

סוֹמֵךְ

This participle makes the root’s supporting action an agent; here, the elders enact it with their hands.

semikhah: Laying on of hands; support or ordination.

סְמִיכָה

This related noun preserves the connection between the hand-laying gesture and the root’s sense of support.

THE PATTERN

Placing hands makes a community’s identification or entrusted responsibility visible in a body.

And you shall bring the Levites before the LORD, and the children of Israel shall lean their hands upon the Levites.

Numbers 8:10 · SDVThe people’s hands visibly identify the Levites with the community as they are presented before the LORD.

And Aaron leans both his hands upon the head of the living goat, and speaks into the open over him all the crookedness of the children of Israel, and all their rebellions, in all their shortcomings, setting them upon the head of the goat, and sends him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness.

Leviticus 16:21 · SDVAaron’s hands make the community’s confessed wrongdoing visible on the goat before it is sent away.

These they stood before the sent ones, and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.

Acts 6:6 · SDVThe assembly’s choice becomes embodied as the apostles place their hands on those entrusted with service.

THE THREAD

And Aaron leans both his hands upon the head of the living goat, and speaks into the open over him all the crookedness of the children of Israel, and all their rebellions, in all their shortcomings, setting them upon the head of the goat, and sends him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness.

Leviticus 16:21 · SDV

Both verses use the Hebrew root ⁨סמך⁩ (s-m-k, lean upon or support) for placing hands on an offering’s head. Here the bull is killed; in Leviticus 16:21, confessed wrongdoing is placed on a live goat and sent away, linking the same gesture to two distinct outcomes: death and release.

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