Deuteronomy 25:14

Summary

Deuteronomy 25:14 prohibits keeping two different sized dry-measure containers ("ephah") in one's house — one large and one small. The verse addresses the use of unequal measuring instruments for volume within a single household.

Key words

• yihYeh ("it will belong / it will be", H1961) — qal imperfect of the verb "to be," here expressing a prohibition through future negation ("there shall not be").
• lekha (le. + Kha, H9005/H9031) — preposition "to" plus 2nd person masculine singular suffix, "to you," marking possession.
• beveitekha (be. + veite + Kha, H9003/H1004B/H9021) — preposition "in" plus construct noun "house of" plus suffix "your," forming "in your house."
• eiFah ("a measure / ephah", H0374) — feminine singular noun naming a specific unit of dry measure; it appears twice (eiFah ve'eiFah, "a measure and a measure").
• gedoLah ("large", H1419A) and ketaNah ("small", H6996A) — feminine singular adjectives modifying the two instances of eiFah, specifying their contrasting sizes.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with the negation lo' ("not", H3808) attached to the verb yihYeh ("it will be/belong", H1961) in the qal imperfect, producing a prohibitive construction: "there shall not be to you." The phrase lekha ("to you", H9005+H9031) marks possession, and beveitekha ("in your house", H9003+H1004B+H9021) locates the prohibition spatially within the household.

The core of the prohibition is the doubled noun construction eiFah ve'eiFah ("a measure and a measure", H0374 repeated), a Hebrew idiom that expresses plurality or variation by repeating the same noun joined with "and." This construction does not simply mean "two measures" but conveys the idea of measures that differ from each other — the repetition itself signals inconsistency. The two adjectives that follow, gedoLah ("large", H1419A) and ketaNah ("small", H6996A), both feminine singular to agree with eiFah, specify the nature of that difference: one measure is large, the other small. The grammatical structure — noun doubled, then split into two contrasting adjectives — is a compact way of saying "measures of different sizes" without needing a word for "different."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders eiFah as metron ("measure"), a generic term for measurement rather than the specific Hebrew unit name, and uses mega ē mikron ("great or small") with a disjunctive "or" instead of the Hebrew's conjunctive doubling. The Vulgate similarly uses modius major et minor ("a greater and a lesser modius"), substituting a Latin unit name for the Hebrew eiFah. The Spanish RV1909 retains "epha" as a transliteration, while SBLIBRE and the BSB translate the idiom more freely as "diverse measures" or "two differing measures," making explicit in translation what the Hebrew doubling construction implies structurally.