Note that the Good News Translation rendering is recast so that the various elements in the sentence are ordered differently. In order to give more prominence to the “head” and the “fat” which are focused on in the Hebrew, another possible structure for this verse can be “The head and the fat, along with the other parts of the animal, must be put in order on the fire by the priests” or “They [the priests] must put the head and the fat together with the other pieces of the animal on the fire.”

Aaron’s sons the priests: the repetition of the entire formula (see verses 5 and 7) is unnecessary and stylistically unacceptable in many languages. The pronoun “they,” as in Good News Translation, is sufficient to convey the meaning.

Upon the wood that is on the fire upon the altar: Good News Translation avoids this awkward and possibly misleading construction by mentioning only the essential element “fire” and leaving the rest implicit. It may be wise to do something like this in many other languages. The word translated fire may be rendered “burning coals” in many cases.

Lay the pieces … in order: this is the same Hebrew verb that is translated “arrange” in the previous verse. It seems to indicate that the priests could not be satisfied with simply piling wood or pieces of meat in bulk on the altar; they had to be arranged in the proper manner, although we do not know precisely how this was done.

Quoted with permission from Péter-Contesse, René and Ellington, John. A Handbook on Leviticus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1990. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .