Deuteronomy 25:15

Summary

The verse commands the use of a full and honest weight and a full and honest measure, stating this will result in a long life on the land that Yehovah, the addressee's God, is giving him. The sentence is built as two parallel clauses (weight; measure) followed by a purpose clause explaining the consequence of compliance.

Key words

• 'Even ("a weight", H0068H) — feminine singular noun, the physical stone-weight used on a balance scale.
• shelemah ("full", H8003) — feminine singular adjective agreeing with 'even, describing completeness/lack of deficiency.
• Tzedek ("righteousness", H6664G) — masculine singular noun joined by va ("and", H9002) to the feminine nouns 'even and eifah; since it is a noun rather than an attributive adjective, it does not need to match their gender.
• yihyeh-lakh ("it will belong to you", H1961 + H9005/H9031) — qal imperfect + prepositional suffix, repeated identically after both the weight-clause and the measure-clause, expressing possession ("you shall have").
• ya'ariykhu ("they may be long", H0748) — hiphil jussive plural, causative form referring to yamekha ("your days", H3117G), expressing the wished-for result rather than a simple prediction.
• noten ("[is] giving", H5414G) — qal participle, presenting the giving of the land as an ongoing or currently-unfolding action rather than a completed past event.

What the text says

The Hebrew presents two structurally identical clauses: "'even shelemah va-tzedek yihyeh-lakh" (a full and right weight will belong to you) and "eifah shelemah va-tzedek yihyeh-lakh" (a full and right measure will belong to you). Each clause pairs a measuring instrument ('even, a weight-stone; eifah, a dry-measure unit) with two qualities — "full" (shelemah), agreeing grammatically with the feminine noun it modifies, and "righteousness" (tzedek), a masculine noun linked by the conjunction va rather than by gender agreement, since it functions as an added noun of quality rather than a matching adjective.

The purpose clause opens with lema'an ("so that", H4616), introducing the hiphil jussive ya'ariykhu ("they may lengthen") with yamekha ("your days") as its subject — grammatically "your days" causes itself to be long, a common Hebrew idiom for extended life. The relative clause 'asher... noten lakh uses the participle noten, portraying the land's giving as a continuing action tied to the divine name Yehovah (H3068) and Elohekha ("your God", H0430G), both in construct/possessive relation to the addressee.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew contains two separate parallel clauses for the weight and the measure, each closed by yihyeh-lakh. The Septuagint compresses this into a single clause using only stathmion ("weight/measure"), without a distinct second term corresponding to eifah. The Vulgate preserves both units separately ("pondus... et modius..."), matching the Hebrew's two-clause structure more closely than the LXX does.