Leviticus 4:26

4:26 Then the priest ¹  must offer all of its fat up in smoke on the altar like the fat of the peace offering sacrifice. So the priest will make atonement ²  on his behalf for ³  his sin and he will be forgiven. ⁴ 

Leviticus 6:30

6:30 But any sin offering from which some of its blood is brought into the Meeting Tent to make atonement in the sanctuary must not be eaten. It must be burned up in the fire. ⁵ 

Leviticus 10:17

10:17 “Why did you not eat the sin offering in the sanctuary? For it is most holy and he gave it to you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, ⁶  to make atonement on their behalf before the Lord.

Leviticus 14:18

14:18 and the remainder of the olive oil ⁷  that is in his hand the priest is to put on the head of the one being cleansed. So the priest is to make atonement for him before the Lord.

Leviticus 14:20

14:20 and the priest is to offer ⁸  the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar. So the priest is to make atonement for him and he will be clean.

Leviticus 14:29

14:29 and the remainder of the olive oil that is in the hand ⁹  of the priest he is to put ¹⁰  on the head of the one being cleansed to make atonement for him before the Lord.

Leviticus 14:31

14:31 a sin offering and the other a burnt offering along with the grain offering. ¹¹  So the priest is to make atonement for the one being cleansed before the Lord.

Leviticus 14:53

14:53 and he is to send the live bird away outside the city ¹²  into the open countryside. So he is to make atonement for the house and it will be clean.

Leviticus 16:10-11

16:10 but the goat which has been designated by lot for Azazel is to be stood alive ¹³  before the Lord to make atonement on it by sending it away to Azazel into the wilderness. ¹⁴ 

The Sin Offering Sacrificial Procedures

16:11 “Aaron is to present the sin offering bull which is for himself, and he is to make atonement on behalf of himself and his household. He is to slaughter the sin offering bull which is for himself,

Leviticus 16:32-34

16:32 “The priest who is anointed and ordained to act as high priest in place of his father ¹⁵  is to make atonement. He is to put on the linen garments, the holy garments, 16:33 and he is to purify ¹⁶  the Most Holy Place, ¹⁷  he is to purify the Meeting Tent and the altar, ¹⁸  and he is to make atonement for ¹⁹  the priests and for all the people of the assembly. 16:34 This is to be a perpetual statute for you ²⁰  to make atonement for the Israelites for ²¹  all their sins once a year.” ²²  So he did just as the Lord had commanded Moses. ²³ 

Leviticus 17:11

17:11 for the life of every living thing ²⁴  is in the blood. ²⁵  So I myself have assigned it to you ²⁶  on the altar to make atonement for your lives, for the blood makes atonement by means of the life. ²⁷ 

Leviticus 19:22

19:22 and the priest is to make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the Lord for his sin that he has committed, ²⁸  and he will be forgiven ²⁹  of his sin ³⁰  that he has committed.

Leviticus 26:10

26:10 You will still be eating stored produce from the previous year ³¹  and will have to clean out what is stored from the previous year to make room for new. ³² 

Leviticus 26:41

26:41 (and I myself will walk in hostility against them and bring them into the land of their enemies), and ³³  then their uncircumcised hearts become humbled and they make up for ³⁴  their iniquity,

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¹ tn Heb “Then he”; the referent has been specified in the translation for clarity. Based on the parallel statements in 4:10 and 4:31, it is the priest who performs this action rather than the person who brought the offering.

² sn The focus of sin offering “atonement” was purging impurities from the tabernacle (see the note on Lev 1:4).

³ tn Heb “from.” In this phrase the preposition מִן (min) may be referring to the reason or cause (“on account of, because of”; GKC 383 §119.z). As J. E. Hartley (Leviticus [WBC], 47) points out, “from” may refer to the removal of the sin, but is an awkward expression. Hartley also suggests that the phrasing might be “an elliptical expression for יְכַפֵּר עַל־לְטַהֵר אֶת־מִן, ‘he will make expiation for…to cleanse…from…,’ as in 16:30.”

⁴ tn Heb “there shall be forgiveness to him” or “it shall be forgiven to him” (KJV similar).

⁵ tn Heb “burned with fire,” an expression which is sometimes redundant in English, but here means “burned up,” “burned up entirely.”

⁶ sn This translation is quite literal. On the surface it appears to mean that the priests would “bear the iniquity” of the congregation by the act of eating the sin offering (so J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:622-25, 635-40). Such a notion is, however, found nowhere else in the Levitical regulations and seems unlikely (so J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 136). A more likely interpretation is reflected in this interpretive rendering: “he gave it to you [as payment] for [your work of] bearing the iniquity of the congregation.” The previous section of the chapter deals with the prebends that the priests received for performing the ministry of the tabernacle (Lev 10:12-15). Lev 10:16-18, therefore, seems to continue the very same topic in the light of the most immediate situation (see R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:702-4).

⁷ tn Heb “and the remainder in the oil.”

⁸ tn Heb “cause to go up.”

⁹ tn Heb “on the hand.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “give.”

¹¹ tn Heb “and the one a burnt offering on the grain offering.”

¹² tn Heb “to from outside to the city.”

¹³ tn The LXX has “he shall stand it” (cf. v. 7).

¹⁴ tn Heb “to make atonement on it to send it away to Azazel toward the wilderness.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “And the priest whom he shall anointed him and whom he shall fill his hand to act as priest under his father.” Imperfect active verbs are often used as passives (see, e.g., v. 27 above and the note on Lev 14:4).

¹⁶ tn Heb “to atone” (also later in this verse); see the note on “purifying the holy place” in 16:20.

¹⁷ tn Heb “the sanctuary of the holy place.” Although this is the only place this expression occurs in the OT, it clearly refers to the innermost shrine behind the veil-canopy, where the ark of the covenant was located.

¹⁸ tn Heb “and the tent of meeting and the alter he shall atone.” The repetition of the verb כִּפֶּר (kipper, “to atone”) at the beginning and end of the sequence appears to be strange, but the MT accents suggest that only “the Most Holy Place” goes with the verb at the beginning of the verse. Of course, the purging of “the Most Holy Place” has been the main emphasis of this chapter from the start (see vv. 2-3 and 11-17).

¹⁹ tn At this point in the verse the verb כִּפֶּר (kipper, “to make atonement”) takes its object with the preposition עַל (’al, “for”; literally, “upon”; contrast the first part of the verse and cf. the notes on Lev 1:4 and 16:20 above).

²⁰ tn Heb “And this shall be for you to a statute of eternity” (cf. v. 29a above). cf. NASB “a permanent statute”; NIV “a lasting ordinance.”

²¹ tn Heb “from”; see note on 4:26.

²² tn Heb “one [feminine] in the year.”

²³ tn The MT of Lev 16:34b reads literally, “and he did just as the Lord had commanded Moses.” This has been retained here in spite of the fact that it suggests that Aaron immediately performed the rituals outlined in Lev 16 (see, e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 224 and 243; J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:1059; note that Aaron was the one to whom Moses was to speak the regulations in this chapter, v. 2). The problem is that the chapter presents these procedures as regulations for “the tenth day of the seventh month” and calls for their fulfillment at that time (Lev 16:29; cf. Lev 23:26-32 and the remarks in P. J. Budd, Leviticus [NCBC], 237), not during the current (first) month (Exod 40:2; note also that they left Sinai in the second month, long before the next seventh month, Num 10:11). The LXX translates, “once in the year it shall be done as the Lord commanded Moses,” attaching “once in the year” to this clause rather than the former one, and rendering the verb as passive, “it shall be done” (cf. NAB, NIV, etc.). We have already observed the passive use of active verbs in this context (see the note on v. 32 above). The RSV (cf. also the NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT) translates, “And Moses did as the Lord commanded him,” ignoring the fact that the name Moses in the Hebrew text has the direct object indicator. Passive verbs, however, regularly take subjects with direct object indicators (see, e.g., v. 27 above). The NIV renders it “And it was done, as the Lord commanded Moses,” following the LXX passive translation. The NASB translates, “And just as the Lord had commanded Moses, so he did,” transposing the introductory verb to the end of the sentence and supplying “so” in order to make it fit the context.

²⁴ tn Heb “the life of the flesh.” Here “flesh” stands for “every living thing,” that is, all creatures (cf. NIV, NRSV, NLT “every creature”; CEV “every living creature.”

²⁵ tn Heb “for the soul/life (נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh) of the flesh, it is in the blood” (cf. the note of v. 10 above and v. 14 below). Although most modern English versions begin a new sentence in v. 11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood” (see, e.g., NJPS, NASB, NIV, NRSV), the כִּי (ki, “for, because”) at the beginning of the verse suggests continuation from v. 10, as the rendering here indicates (see, e.g., NEB, NLT; J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 261; and G. J. Wenham, Leviticus [NICOT], 239).

sn This verse is a well-known crux interpretum for blood atonement in the Bible. The close association between the blood and “the soul/life [נֶפֶשׁ] of the flesh [בָּשָׂר, basar]” (v. 11a) begins in Gen 9:2-5 (if not Gen 4:10-11), where the Lord grants man the eating of meat (i.e., the “flesh” of animals) but also issues a warning: “But flesh [בָּשָׂר] with its soul/life [נֶפֶשׁ], [which is] its blood, you shall not eat” (cf. G. J. Wenham, Genesis [WBC], 1:151 and 193). Unfortunately, the difficulty in translating נֶפֶשׁ consistently (see the note on v. 10 above) obscures the close connection between the (human) “person” in v. 10 and “the life” (of animals, 2 times) and “your (human) lives” in v. 11, all of which are renderings of נֶפֶשׁ. The basic logic of the passage is that (a) no נֶפֶשׁ should eat the blood when he eats the בָּשָׂר of an animal (v. 10) because (b) the נֶפֶשׁ of בָּשָׂר is identified with the blood that flows through and permeates it (v. 11a), and (c) the Lord himself has assigned (i.e., limited the use of) animal blood, that is, animal נֶפֶשׁ, to be the instrument or price of making atonement for the נֶפֶשׁ of people (v. 11b). See the detailed remarks and literature cited in R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:693-95, 697-98.

²⁶ tn Heb “And I myself have given it to you.”

²⁷ tn Heb “for the blood, it by (בְּ, bet preposition, “in”] the life makes atonement.” The interpretation of the preposition is pivotal here. Some scholars have argued that it is a bet of exchange; that is, “the blood makes atonement in exchange for the life [of the slaughtered animal]” (see R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:694-95, 697 for analysis and criticism of this view). It is more likely that, as in the previous clause (“your lives”), “life/soul” (נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh) here refers to the person who makes the offering, not the animal offered. The blood of the animal makes atonement for the person who offers it either “by means of” (instrumental bet) the “life/soul” of the animal, which it symbolizes or embodies (the meaning of the translation given here); or perhaps the blood of the animal functions as “the price” (bet of price) for ransoming the “life/soul” of the person.

²⁸ tn Heb “on his sin which he has sinned.”

²⁹ tn Heb “there shall be forgiveness to him” or “it shall be forgiven to him.”

³⁰ tn Heb “from his sin.”

³¹ tn Heb “old [produce] growing old.”

³² tn Heb “and old from the presence of new you will bring out.”

³³ tn Heb “or then,” although the LXX has “then” and the Syriac “and then.”

³⁴ tn Heb “and then they make up for.” On the verb “make up for” see the note on v. 34 above.