Shemini 5786
The End of the Ritual
This week we are reading Parashat Shemini (Leviticus 9–11), and I’m going to ask you to put up with a little bit of Hebrew grammar in order for me to show you the thing I want to talk about. Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, or at least two weeks ago, when we were reading Parashat Tzav. In that parashah, I’m looking at Lev 8:14 — the only other place in Leviticus, or for that matter anywhere else in the Bible, where what we’ll be talking about also occurs.
Like Leviticus 9 in our parashah, Leviticus 8 is dealing with the inauguration of the sacrificial service and the inauguration of the priests who are supposed to perform it. Those rituals, performed just once in history (on Day 1 and Day 8 of the inauguration ceremonies), require a sacrificial offering, which must be performed by Moses. For the moment, he is the only one authorized to do this kind of thing, because Aaron has not yet been made high priest:
Lev 8:15 and it was slaughtered. Moses took the blood and with his finger put some on each of the horns of the altar, cleansing the altar; then he poured out [יָצַק] the blood at the base of the altar. Thus he consecrated it in order to make expiation upon it. [NJPS]
Here’s what Baruch Levine says in the JPS Torah Commentary on Leviticus:
The verb y‑ts‑k, “to pour,” usually refers to water, and only here and in 9:9 is it used with respect to pouring sacrificial blood. The usual verb is sh‑f-kh, “to pour.”
Compare the earlier verse where Moses is commanded to do this activity:
Exod 29:11 Slaughter the bull before the LORD, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, 12and take some of the bull’s blood and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger; then pour out [תִּשְׁפֹּ֔ךְ] the rest of the blood at the base of the altar.
In Lev 8:15, Moses is doing exactly what the Exodus verses command. Let’s line the command and the actual performance up next to each other. Here’s Exod 29:11–12, where the commandment is given:
וְשָׁחַטְתָּ֥ אֶת־הַפָּ֖ר לִפְנֵ֣י יְ׳הוָ֑ה פֶּ֖תַח אֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵֽד׃ וְלָֽקַחְתָּ֙ מִדַּ֣ם הַפָּ֔ר וְנָתַתָּ֛ה עַל־קַרְנֹ֥ת הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ בְּאֶצְבָּעֶ֑ךָ וְאֶת־כָּל־הַדָּ֣ם תִּשְׁפֹּ֔ךְ אֶל־יְס֖וֹד הַמִּזְבֵּֽחַ׃
vs. Lev 8:15, where it is carried out:
וַיִּשְׁחָ֗ט וַיִּקַּ֨ח מֹשֶׁ֤ה אֶת־הַדָּם֙ וַ֠יִּתֵּן עַל־קַרְנ֨וֹת הַמִּזְבֵּ֤חַ סָבִיב֙ בְּאֶצְבָּע֔וֹ וַיְחַטֵּ֖א אֶת־הַמִּזְבֵּ֑חַ וְאֶת־הַדָּ֗ם יָצַק֙ אֶל־יְס֣וֹד הַמִּזְבֵּ֔חַ
All those words in bold are the verbs performed, or to be performed, in this inaugural sacrifice, from slaughtering the animal to pouring the blood out on the horns of the altar. The Leviticus performance verse adds that Moses’s putting the blood on the horns “cleansed” (חטא) the altar of sin. Otherwise the sequence of verbs is the same, except that, as we saw earlier, the last verb in the sequence, the “pouring” verb, is different.
So much for Hebrew vocabulary; now for the biblical Hebrew grammar I need to talk about today. There’s a biblical Hebrew verb form that’s the standard way to describe what happens in a narrative, one thing after the other. It’s called by various names: the converted (im)perfect or the (im)perfect consecutive or what I was taught as a kid: the vav ha-hipukh, the “conversive” vav — that letter ו־ v’- in front of the verb that “flips” the tense of the verb from past to future or future to past. (Don’t tell the specialists I said it that way.)
The important thing here is that when you find a verb that is not in that converted form, the verb is not in the sequence of action. It’s not the next thing that happened. Instead, they are telling you something else about that verb. You can see in the Hebrew above that the last verb in each, the two “pouring” verbs — unlike all the others that precede them — do not have that ו־ in front of them.
The NJPS translations that you see even further above both introduce the pouring of the blood with “then” — which the grammar of the verse is trying desperately not to say.
Now let’s go to the only other place in the Bible where that ritual occurs, in our parashah, Lev 9:8–9, where (on Day 8, in a longer sequence) Aaron must perform this procedure for himself. You can see a few slight differences: instead of “taking” the blood (לקח), Aaron “dips” (טבל) his finger into it, and the verb “approach” or “draw near” (קרב) is highlighted:
Lev 9:8 Aaron came forward [וַיִּקְרַ֥ב] to the altar and slaughtered [וַיִּשְׁחַ֛ט] his calf of sin offering. 9 Aaron’s sons brought [וַ֠יַּקְרִבוּ] the blood to him; he dipped [וַיִּטְבֹּ֤ל] his finger in the blood and put [וַיִּתֵּ֖ן] it on the horns of the altar; and he poured [יָצַ֔ק] out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar.
Once again, the “pouring” verb is יצק instead of שׁפך as in Exodus. Once again — though without using the word “then” — NJPS implies that was the next thing that happened. Yet (once again) that verb does not have the telltale ו־ telling us that the actions are being recorded in sequence.
Jacob Milgrom writes in his Anchor Bible commentary to Leviticus:
Notice once again the altered word order and the verb as a simple perfect to indicate that this is the final rite in the sacrificial procedure (vv 8–15).
I don’t know, and Milgrom doesn’t say, why avoiding the sequential form should indicate that this is the last thing in the sequence. If we go look at the continuation of the ceremony on Day 8, we find it continues this way:
Lev 9:10 The fat, the kidneys, and the protuberance of the liver from the sin offering he turned into smoke [הִקְטִ֖יר] on the altar—as the LORD had commanded Moses; 11 and the flesh and the skin were consumed in fire [שָׂרַ֣ף] outside the camp.
Like the last verb in v. 9, all these verbs are “simple” perfects — they don’t use the special form that tells you a sequence is continuing. That tells me that the final procedure of the ritual, the culmination of the ritual, is not pouring out the blood at the base of the altar, even though a different vocabulary word was chosen for it. The culmination of this ritual is when Aaron dips his finger in the blood and puts it on the horns of the altar. Telling us he poured out the blood is just an aside.
We’ll have more from the book of Leviticus next week.
