What Does Leviticus 5:12 Mean?
Then he brings it to the priest, and the priest takes a fistful of it, its remembrance, and sends it up in smoke on the altar, as the offerings of fire to the LORD. It is an offering for falling short.
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
Then shall he bring it to the priest, and the priest shall take his handful of it, even a memorial thereof, and burn it on the altar, according to the offerings made by fire unto the LORD: it is a sin offering.THE KEY
The handful is called a memorial before the verse names it a sin offering, joining remembrance to what is missing.
THE MEANING
You see the missing given a place in remembrance before the LORD: the priest takes a handful, marks it as a memorial, and offers it. The verse holds the named missing and the act of approach together, bringing what has gone wrong into God’s regard.
THE ROOT
אַזְכָּרָה
azkarah
GROWS FROM
זכר
Remember; call to mind.
The Hebrew word for “memorial” grows from זכר (z-k-r), “remember.” The priest’s handful is not simply consumed: the verse presents it as a portion that brings the matter into remembrance before the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
zakar: Remember; call to mind.
זָכַר
This verb gives the memorial its connection to remembering.
zikaron: Remembrance; memorial.
זִכָּרוֹן
This related noun describes the names borne continually before the LORD in Exodus 28:29.
חַטָּאת
chatat
GROWS FROM
חטא
Miss; go wrong.
“offering for falling short” in this verse is chatat. The offering’s name shares its root with the verb for missing and the noun for a missing. The ritual term lets the English “sin offering” carry both the offering and the missing it addresses.
ALSO GROWS
chata: To miss; to err.
חָטָא
The verb supplies the action beneath the offering’s name: missing the mark.
chet: Missing; sin.
חֵטְא
This related noun names the missing that the chatat offering addresses.
THE PATTERN
A memorial makes a concrete thing or name present before God.
And Aaron will carry the names of the children of Israel on the breastpiece of ruling, upon his heart, when he goes into the set-apart place, for a remembrance before the LORD continually.And when he stretched his gaze upon him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said to him, Your prayers and your acts of compassion have come up as a memorial before God.THE THREAD
And Aaron will carry the names of the children of Israel on the breastpiece of ruling, upon his heart, when he goes into the set-apart place, for a remembrance before the LORD continually.The same root, זכר (z-k-r), “remember,” underlies the memorial in both verses. Here a handful is offered as a memorial; there the names are borne on the priest’s heart continually before the LORD.
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