Leviticus 11:44

Summary

The verse grounds a command in a divine self-identification: because Yehovah is the God of the addressees, they are instructed to sanctify themselves and become holy, since Yehovah is holy. It closes with a prohibition against self-defilement through contact with swarming creatures that move on the ground.

Key words

• ki ("for", H3588A) — appears twice (positions 1 and 11), each time introducing a causal clause: the first ties holiness to Yehovah's identity as God, the second ties it explicitly to Yehovah's own holiness.
• hitkaddishtem ("you will keep yourselves holy", H6942G) — hithpael (reflexive) sequential perfect; the reflexive stem indicates the subjects act upon themselves, not merely receive holiness passively.
• heyitem ("you will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the chain begun by hitkaddishtem; together the two verbs form a two-step sequence: self-sanctification followed by a resulting state of being.
• qadosh ("holy", H6918G) — used twice: once as plural adjective qedoshim ("holy", masc. pl.) describing the addressees' expected state, once as masculine singular describing Yehovah (ani, "I").
• tetamme'u ("you must make unclean", H2930A) — piel imperfect, intensive stem with ongoing/future aspect, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), forming the prohibition against self-defilement.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel causal clauses, each opened by ki (H3588A). The first clause (positions 1–5) identifies the subject: ani Yehovah 'elohei-khem ("I, Yehovah, [am] your God"), using a bare personal pronoun 'ani (H0589) followed by the divine name and a construct noun 'elohei (H0430G) with the second-person plural suffix -khem (H9026). This is a nominal clause with no verb "to be" expressed, typical of Hebrew identity statements.

The narrative vav (H9001) then chains two sequential perfects: hitkaddishtem (H6942G, hithpael) and heyitem (H1961, qal). The hithpael stem marks the first verb as reflexive — the action is performed by the subjects upon themselves — while the second verb, in the simple qal stem, expresses the resulting state of "being holy" (qedoshim, H6918G, masculine plural adjective). The second ki clause repeats the causal structure but shifts the adjective qadosh (H6918G) to masculine singular, applied to 'ani (H0589) referring to Yehovah alone — a grammatical parallel between the plural holiness expected of the addressees and the singular holiness attributed to the divine subject.

The final clause negates a piel imperfect, tetamme'u (H2930A), with lo' (H3808). The piel stem intensifies the verb's semantic force ("to make unclean" rather than a simple "be unclean"), and the imperfect aspect marks ongoing or repeated potential action, prohibited here. The object is nafshoteikhem ("your selves", H5315I), a feminine plural construct noun with the second-person plural suffix, marked by the untranslated direct object particle 'et (H0853). The condition triggering the prohibition is contact be-khol ha-sheretz ha-romes 'al ha-'aretz — "by any swarming thing that creeps on the earth," where romes (H7430) is a qal participle describing ongoing action ("the one creeping").

Differences between versions

The LXX repeats the divine title kyrios ho theos hymōn ("Lord your God") a second time in the second causal clause (ὅτι ἅγιός εἰμι ἐγὼ κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν), where the Hebrew states only ki qadosh 'ani ("for holy [am] I"), without repeating the divine name or title. The Vulgate follows the shorter Hebrew pattern in this second clause (quia ego sanctus sum), matching the Hebrew's brevity rather than the LXX's expansion.