16:18 “Then 11 he is to go out to the altar which is before the Lord and make atonement for it. He is to take 12 some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it all around on the horns of the altar.
26:1 “‘You must not make for yourselves idols, 20 so you must not set up for yourselves a carved image or a pillar, and you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down before 21 it, for I am the Lord your God.
1 tn Heb “Then he”; the referent (the offerer) has been specified in the translation for clarity. The LXX has “they” rather than “he,” suggesting that the priests, not the offerer, were to slaughter the bull (cf. the notes on vv. 6a and 9a).
2 tn Heb “the son of the herd”; cf. KJV “bullock”; NASB, NIV “young bull.”
3 tn “Splash” (cf. NAB) or “dash” (cf. NRSV) is better than “sprinkle,” which is the common English translation of this verb (זָרַק, zaraq; see, e.g., KJV, NASB, NIV, NLT). “Sprinkle” is not strong enough (contrast נָזָה [nazah], which does indeed mean “to sprinkle” or “to splatter”; cf. Lev 4:6).
4 sn See v. 7, where this altar is identified as the altar of fragrant incense.
5 tn Or “Behold!” (so KJV, ASV, NASB); NRSV “See.”
6 tn Heb “today they presented their sin offering and their burnt offering before the
7 tn Heb “and he” (i.e., the priest mentioned at the end of v. 6). The referent has been specified in the translation for clarity.
8 sn See the note on Lev 1:4 “make atonement.” The purpose of sin offering “atonement,” in particular, was to purge impurities from the tabernacle (see Lev 15:31 and 16:5-19, 29-34), whether they were caused by physical uncleannesses or by sins and iniquities. In this case, the woman has not “sinned” morally by having a child. Even Mary brought such offerings for giving birth to Jesus (Luke 2:22-24), though she certainly did not “sin” in giving birth to him. Note that the result of bringing this “sin offering” was “she will be clean,” not “she will be forgiven” (cf. Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35; 5:10, 13). The impurity of the blood flow has caused the need for this “sin offering,” not some moral or relational infringement of the law (contrast Lev 4:2, “When a person sins by straying unintentionally from any of the commandments of the
9 tn Or “she will be[come] pure.”
10 tn Heb “from her source [i.e., spring] of blood,” possibly referring to the female genital area, not just the “flow of blood” itself (as suggested by J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:761). Cf. ASV “from the fountain of her blood.”
11 tn Heb “And.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) indicates the sequence of events here.
12 tn Heb “And he shall take.”
13 tn Smr and LXX add after “tent of meeting” the following: “to make it a burnt offering or a peace offering to the
14 tc Smr includes the suffix “it,” which is needed in any case in the translation to conform to English style.
15 sn The exact meaning of this penalty clause is not certain. It could mean (1) that he will be executed, whether by God or by man, (2) that he will be excommunicated from sanctuary worship and/or community benefits, or (3) that his line will be terminated by God (i.e., extirpation). See also the note on Lev 7:20.
16 tn Heb “To your generations.”
17 tn The Piel (v. 2) and Hiphil (v. 3) forms of the verb קָדַשׁ (qadash) appear to be interchangeable in this context. Both mean “to consecrate” (Heb “make holy [or “sacred”]”).
18 tn Heb “and his impurity [is] on him”; NIV “is ceremonially unclean”; NAB, NRSV “while he is in a state of uncleanness.”
19 sn Regarding the “cut off” penalty, see the note on Lev 7:20. Cf. the interpretive translation of TEV “he can never again serve at the altar.”
20 sn For the literature regarding the difficult etymology and meaning of the term for “idols” (אֱלִילִם, ’elilim), see the literature cited in the note on Lev 19:4. It appears to be a diminutive play on words with אֵל (’el, “god, God”) and, perhaps at the same time, recalls a common Semitic word for “worthless, weak, powerless, nothingness.” Snaith suggests a rendering of “worthless godlings.”
21 tn Heb “on.” The “sculpted stone” appears to be some sort of stone with images carved into (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 181, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 449).
22 tn Heb “and the priest shall cause him to be valued.”
23 tn Heb “on the mouth which the hand of the one who vowed reaches.”