Deuteronomy 22:30

Summary

The verse prohibits a man from taking his father's wife as his own wife, and from uncovering what is called "the skirt/corner" of his father. It expresses a legal restriction on marital and sexual relations within family structures, phrased in two parallel negative clauses.

Key words

• yiqqach ("he will take", H3947G) — qal imperfect, denotes a future/ongoing prohibited action, "he will [not] take."
• 'ish ("a man", H0376G) — masculine singular noun, the subject of the first clause, generic "a man" rather than a specific individual.
• 'eshet ("wife of", H0802H) — feminine singular construct noun, grammatically bound to the following word, meaning "wife of [someone]."
• yegalleh ("he will uncover", H1540I) — piel imperfect, an intensive verb stem indicating a deliberate act of exposing or uncovering, contrasted with the qal used for "take."
• kenaf ("skirt of", H3671) — feminine singular construct noun; construct form ties it to "his father," producing "the skirt/corner of his father."

What the text says

The verse is built from two parallel negative clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002), each governed by the negation lo' ("not", H3808). The first clause — lo' yiqqach 'ish 'et-'eshet 'aviv — uses the qal verb yiqqach with the generic subject 'ish, and the object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) introduces the direct object 'eshet 'aviv, "the wife of his father," with the pronominal suffix -v ("his", H9023) attached to 'av ("father", H0001G). The second clause repeats the negation and shifts to the piel verb yegalleh, whose intensive stem marks a deliberate, focused action of uncovering, applied to kenaf 'aviv, "the skirt/corner of his father" — again with the possessive suffix on "father."

Both clauses use construct chains ('eshet 'aviv, kenaf 'aviv) to link the object noun tightly to "father," a grammatical pattern that in Biblical Hebrew often expresses possession or close association without a separate word for "of." The noun kenaf literally denotes an edge, wing, or corner of a garment; here it functions as a construct noun paired with "father," producing an idiomatic expression whose literal components ("skirt/corner of father") differ from a plain description of marital relations.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew kenaf 'aviv ("skirt/corner of his father") is rendered in the Vulgate as operimentum ejus ("his covering") and in the LXX as synkalymma tou patros ("covering of the father"), both using a general term for "covering" rather than the specific body-part/garment image of "wing" or "skirt." The BSB gives an interpretive rendering, "his father's marriage bed," translating the idiom by its inferred meaning rather than its literal wording. The LXX text as given also renders the first clause without an explicit verb matching yiqqach ("take"), instead using a negated form that differs structurally from the Hebrew's qal verb construction.