2. This is the teaching. Leviticus repeatedly introduces a particular set of regulations with the phrase “this is the teaching [torah],” this being the first occurrence. “Teaching” is, in fact, the primary meaning of torah, and this translation preserves that sense throughout, though in these contexts, “procedure,” “ritual,” “regulation,” and similar terms used in sundry modern English versions are all justified. In any case, the reiteration of the term is a strong verbal symptom of how Leviticus differs formally from other biblical books. This is primarily a book of instructions, and one of its Hebrew names, torat kohanim, could aptly be translated as “Priestly Instructions.”

It is the very burnt offering. The semantic force of the Hebrew phrase hiʾ haʿolah is to emphasize the noun (ʿolah) that follows the indicative pronoun (hiʾ).

flame. The literal sense is “place of burning” (though the translation “hearth” proposed by some modern scholars sounds altogether too domestic for a cultic setting). Stylistically, this entire passage about the burnt offering is dominated by terms related to burning, as if to focus the idea of a sacred fire that burns perpetually, coordinated with the sacrificial fire that entirely consumes the burnt offering. The word for burnt offering or holocaust, ʿolah, is not derived from a root that means “to burn” but rather from the verb “to go up,” which, however, is metonymically linked to burning by suggesting the idea that the whole sacrifice “goes up” in smoke. Fire and blood are the two substances that are the key to the sacrificial rites, but the present passage gives preeminence to the nexus between cult and fire—the element associated with God’s fiery epiphany at Sinai and with his first appearance to Moses in the burning bush. Hence an altar with a fire that “shall not go out.”

9. Aaron and his sons shall eat. It must be kept in mind that in this agrarian society, the landless members of the tribe of Levi needed the cult for the bread and butter (or, more literally, the bread and meat) of their physical sustenance. Throughout the sacrificial regulations, provisions are made for setting aside portions to be consumed by the priests.

10. It is holy of holies. As elsewhere, this structure is a way of indicating a superlative in biblical idiom, the sense being: supremely holy, sacrosanct.

11. Whatever touches them shall become holy. It is also possible to construe this sentence, as Baruch Levine does, to mean: whoever touches them shall be holy (i.e., no person is allowed to touch the flatcakes made from the grain offerings who is not “holy,” or a member of the priestly caste). Jacob Milgrom, however, makes a persuasive case on philological and other grounds that the reference is to objects rather than to persons. What is involved, then, is an idea some scholars have described as a “contagion” of holiness symmetrical with the more common idea of a contagion of impurity. Objects that come in contact with consecrated substances such as the grain offering themselves become consecrated and can no longer be used for profane purposes.

15. successor among his sons. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “in his stead among his sons,” but “in his stead” is regularly used in references to monarchy to indicate the successor to the throne, and that must be the meaning here.

a perpetual portion for the LORD. Although the use of the noun ḥoq, “portion,” may be a linguistic fossil harking back to a premonotheistic era when the sacrifice was conceived as a way of offering food to the gods, its introduction here is more probably dictated by the desire to use a complementary term: one part of the grain offering was reserved for the priests to be eaten as their portion, and so the remaining part burned on the altar is described as “a perpetual portion for the LORD.”

16. every priest’s grain offering shall be entire. That is, when a priest presents a grain offering on his own behalf rather than on behalf of a layperson, no part is to be reserved for his consumption, all of it must be burned on the altar.