Leviticus 1:8

1:8 Then the sons of Aaron, the priests, must arrange the parts with the head and the suet ¹  on the wood that is in the fire on the altar. ² 

Leviticus 14:49

14:49 Then he ³  is to take two birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric, and some twigs of hyssop ⁴  to decontaminate ⁵  the house,

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¹ tc A few Hebrew mss, Smr, LXX, Syriac, and Tg. Onq. have the conjunction “and” before “the head,” which would suggest the rendering “and the head and the suet” rather than the rendering of the MT here, “with the head and the suet.”

sn “Suet” is the specific term used for the hard, fatty tissues found around the kidneys of sheep and cattle. A number of modern English versions have simplified this to “fat” (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

² tn Heb “on the wood, which is on the fire, which is on the altar.” Cf. NIV “on the burning wood”; NLT “on the wood fire.”

³ tn The pronoun “he” refers to the priest mentioned in the previous verse.

⁴ tn Regarding these ritual materials, see the note on v. 4 above.

⁵ tn Regarding the Piel of חָטָא (khata’, cf. v. 52) meaning to “decontaminate” or “perform a decontamination,” see the notes on Lev 8:15 and 9:15.

sn In Lev 8:15, for example, the “sin offering” is used to “decontaminate” the burnt offering altar. As argued above (see the note on v. 7 above), these ritual materials and the procedures performed with them do not constitute a “sin offering” (contrast vv. 19 and 31 above). In fact, no sin offering was required for the purification of a house.