Leviticus 8:3 - On the “community” label

(The above rendering and its footnote come from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation.)

Here the expression כׇּל־הָעֵדָה is used as a metonym, a conventional linguistic device that works on more than one level at a time. (See the section “Gender and Figurative Language” in this introduction, pp. 3–4.)

God is actually speaking about a smaller group who are to serve as representatives of the whole community. That fact goes without saying due to both the limited space available for people to stand “at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting,” and the common practice in ancient Israel of having leaders stand in for the community. Practically speaking, this must be a representative body of some kind, not the entire populace of well over a million. Taking the label here as a metonym, rather than a literal reference to every Israelite, yields a more coherent and informative utterance.

Construing metonyms literally is a common mistake made by readers of translated texts, whenever the source text presupposes a different convention from those of the translation’s language. The result can be that the translation appears to be less coherent (and less plausible) than the original text is, particularly with regard to the gender of those in view.

Such is the likelihood here. A footnote therefore points out the convention that is in play, so that it can be properly understood and appreciated.