Leviticus 17:10

Summary

The verse establishes that any person — whether Israelite or resident sojourner — who eats blood will face divine opposition: God will set his face against that individual and cut them off from their people.

Key words

• 'ish ("a person", H0376G) — doubled ('ish 'ish), a Hebrew construction distributing the rule to "any person, whoever it may be," covering every individual without exception.
• ha-Ger ha-Gar ("the sojourner who sojourns", H1616 / H1481A) — a noun paired with its own participial form from the same root, emphasizing the sojourner precisely as one who resides among the people, not a transient visitor.
• yo'khal ("he will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, marking the prohibited action as ongoing or potential, "whoever eats/would eat."
• natati fanay ("I will set my face", H5414H + H6440H) — sequential perfect of natan ("to give/set") with "face" (panim) in construct plus 1st person suffix; this idiom expresses direct, personal opposition or confrontation initiated by the speaker.
• hikhratti ("I will cut off", H3772I) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect of karat, denoting an action caused/brought about by the subject — removal from the community rather than a passive disappearance.

What the text says

The verse opens with the doubled noun 'ish 'ish ("a person, a person," H0376G), a repetition that functions distributively to mean "any person whatsoever." This subject is then specified through two parallel prepositional phrases: mi-Beit Yisra'el ("from the house of Israel," H1004M + H3478) and u-min ha-Ger ha-Gar be-tokham ("and from the sojourner who sojourns in their midst," H1616 + H1481A + H8432). The second phrase uses both the noun ger and the participle gar from the same root, reinforcing that the sojourner in view is one who dwells continuously among the people, not merely passing through.

The relative clause asher yo'khal kol-dam ("who will eat any blood," H0834A + H0398 + H1818) defines the prohibited act using the qal imperfect, which can carry future or habitual/conditional force — "whoever eats" or "should eat."

The consequence is expressed through two sequential perfects (ve-qatalti forms), a verbal chain typical of legal or narrative sequences in Biblical Hebrew: ve-natati fanay ("and I will set my face," H5414H) against ha-nefesh ha-okhelet ("the person who eats," H5315J + H0398, feminine participle agreeing with the feminine noun nefesh), followed by ve-hikhratti otah ("and I will cut her off," H3772I, hiphil), using the feminine pronoun to match nefesh. The final phrase mi-qerev 'amah ("from the midst of her people," H7130G + H5971B) specifies the site of removal as removal from the collective people.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'ish 'ish with a single doubled anthrōpos anthrōpos ("man man"), matching the Hebrew repetition. The Vulgate simplifies this to homo quilibet ("any man whatsoever"), collapsing the doubling into a single quantifier without the repeated noun structure. The Hebrew idiom natati fanay ("I will set my face") appears in the LXX as epistēsō to prosōpon mou ("I will set my face"), a close structural match, while the Vulgate's obfirmabo faciem meam ("I will harden/set firmly my face") intensifies the idiom with a verb suggesting firmness or resolve not explicit in the Hebrew verb natan ("to give/set").