Leviticus 18:16

Summary

Leviticus 18:16 prohibits uncovering the nakedness of one's brother's wife, then restates the prohibited object as "the nakedness of your brother" — identifying the wife's nakedness with the brother's own.

Key words

• 'er.Vat ("nakedness of", H6172) — feminine singular construct noun, appearing twice, each time opening a construct chain ("nakedness of X").
• 'e.shet ("wife of", H802) — feminine singular construct, linking "nakedness" to "brother" via the intermediate term "wife."
• 'a.Chi ("brother", H251) — masculine singular construct, appearing twice with the same pronominal suffix -kha ("your"), first attached to "wife" and then standing alone.
• te.ga.Leh ("you will uncover", H1540) — Piel imperfect, second masculine singular; the Piel stem intensifies the action of "uncovering," and the imperfect with preceding negation lo' (H3808) forms a durative prohibition ("you shall not uncover").
• hi' ("she/it", H1931) — feminine personal pronoun functioning as the predicate of a verbless (nominal) clause, linking "the nakedness of your brother" back to the wife's nakedness just named.

What the text says

The verse is built in two halves. The first half is the prohibition itself: 'ervat 'eshet-'achikha lo' tegalleh — "the nakedness of the wife of your brother, not you-will-uncover." The object ("nakedness of your brother's wife") is placed before the negated verb, a common pattern in this chapter's list of prohibitions, which places the forbidden object in emphatic first position before the verb of uncovering.

The second half, 'ervat 'achikha hi', has no verb of being in the Hebrew; the pronoun hi' ("she/it") itself functions as the copula, joining the phrase "nakedness of your brother" to the subject already introduced. Literally: "nakedness of your brother, it [is]." This construction restates the forbidden nakedness not as belonging to the wife per se, but as identical to "the nakedness of your brother" — the same construct noun 'er.Vat used in both halves creates a lexical echo, tying the wife's exposure conceptually to the brother's.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the second clause causally, adding quia ("because"): "you shall not uncover... because it is the nakedness of your brother," where the Hebrew simply juxtaposes noun and pronoun without a causal conjunction. The LXX's first clause reads "ἀσχημοσύνην γυναικὸς σου" ("the nakedness of your wife"), lacking the term corresponding to "brother" (ἀδελφοῦ) that appears in the Hebrew 'achikha and that the LXX itself supplies in the second clause ("ἀδελφοῦ σού"). The BSB and SBLIBRE both replace the Hebrew's bare pronominal clause ("it is the nakedness of your brother") with an interpretive causal statement ("that would shame your brother" / "eso deshonraría a tu hermano"), introducing the notion of "shame" not present as a lexical item in the Hebrew text.