Leviticus 18:19

Summary

Leviticus 18:19 prohibits sexual approach to a woman during the period called niddat tum'atah ("the menstrual impurity of her uncleanness"). The verse uses the same idiom found elsewhere in Leviticus 18 — "to draw near... to uncover nakedness" — to designate sexual contact.

Key words

• niddat ("menstruous impurity of", H5079) — feminine singular construct noun, the first term of a double construct chain, naming the specific state of ritual impurity.
• tum'atah ("her uncleanness", H2932) — feminine singular construct noun with pronominal suffix -ah ("her"); together with niddat it forms "the impurity-state of her uncleanness," a doubled construction that intensifies the description of the condition rather than naming two separate things.
• tikrav ("you will draw near", H7126) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular; the imperfect gives the prohibition a durative or general force ("you shall not approach," applicable to any instance).
• galot ("to uncover", H1540) — piel infinitive construct, governed by the preposition le- ("to"); the piel stem intensifies the action of the root, and the infinitive expresses purpose or result: "so as to uncover."
• ervatah ("her nakedness", H6172) — feminine singular construct noun with suffix -ah; the direct object of the uncovering, idiomatic for sexual exposure/contact.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a single prohibition with two verbal components. The main verb tikrav ("you will [not] draw near") is negated by lo ("not", H3808) and takes the woman as its object, introduced by 'el- ("to", H0413). This is followed by the infinitive clause le-galot 'ervatah ("to uncover her nakedness"), which specifies the purpose or nature of the forbidden "drawing near." The construction tikrav le-galot — finite verb plus purpose infinitive — is the same pattern used throughout Leviticus 18 to designate sexual relations, so "approaching" here is defined by its stated aim of "uncovering nakedness."

The temporal/circumstantial condition is marked by the phrase be-niddat tum'atah ("in the impurity of her uncleanness"), a double construct chain (niddah construct + tum'ah construct + suffix) that stacks two nouns from the semantic field of ritual impurity. This doubling is a Hebrew intensifying or specifying device: niddat narrows tum'atah to a particular kind of uncleanness, namely the menstrual one, without a separate adjective for "menstrual" existing in the Hebrew text itself — the specificity comes entirely from the noun niddah, which in this context designates the menstrual period.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders niddat tum'atah as χωρισμῷ ἀκαθαρσίας αὐτῆς ("separation of her uncleanness"), using χωρισμός ("separation") rather than a term explicitly tied to menstruation, though ἀκαθαρσία ("uncleanness") preserves the impurity sense. The Vulgate simplifies the construct chain to quæ patitur menstrua ("who suffers menstruation"), naming the condition directly rather than reproducing the two-noun Hebrew structure. Modern versions such as BSB and SBLIBRE render the infinitive clause le-galot 'ervatah ("to uncover her nakedness") explicitly as sexual relations, making interpretive explicit what the Hebrew idiom states more indirectly.