Leviticus 18:24
אַל־תִּֽטַּמְּאוּ בְּכָל־אֵלֶּה כִּי בְכָל־אֵלֶּה נִטְמְאוּ הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר־אֲנִי מְשַׁלֵּחַ מִפְּנֵיכֶֽם׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
אַל־תִּֽטַּמְּא֖וּ בְּכָל־אֵ֑לֶּה כִּ֤י בְכָל־אֵ֙לֶּה֙ נִטְמְא֣וּ הַגּוֹיִ֔ם אֲשֶׁר־אֲנִ֥י מְשַׁלֵּ֖חַ מִפְּנֵיכֶֽם׃
Μὴ μιαίνεσθε ἐν πᾶσιν τούτοις· ἐν πᾶσι γὰρ τούτοις ἐμιάνθησαν τὰ ἔθνη ἃ ἐγὼ ἐξαποστέλλω πρὸ προσώπου ὑμῶν.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Nec polluamini in omnibus his quibus contaminatæ sunt universæ gentes, quas ego ejiciam ante conspectum vestrum,
“‘No se contaminen con ninguna de estas cosas, porque las naciones que voy a expulsar de delante de ustedes se contaminaron haciendo todo esto.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
En ninguna de estas cosas os amancillaréis; porque en todas estas cosas se han ensuciado las gentes que yo echo de delante de vosotros:
Do not defile yourselves by any of these practices, for by all these things the nations I am driving out before you have defiled themselves.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Leviticus 18:24 prohibits self-defilement through the practices listed in the preceding verses, grounding this prohibition in the claim that the nations being expelled from before Israel became defiled through these same practices.
Key words
- ti.ta.me.'U ("you defile yourselves", H2930A) — hithpael jussive, second person masculine plural. The hithpael stem marks reflexive action: the subject acts upon itself, not merely receives an action from outside.
- nit.me.'U ("they have made themselves unclean", H2930A) — same root as above, but niphal perfect. The niphal here carries a passive/reflexive nuance, and the perfect aspect marks this as a completed state already reached by the nations, contrasting with the jussive prohibition addressed to the audience.
- khol ("all", H3605) — appears twice (lines 4 and 8), each time governing the demonstrative 'E.leh / 'e.leh ("these [things]", H0428), creating a structural parallel between the prohibition and its rationale.
- me.sha.Le.ach ("[am] about to send away", H7971G) — piel participle, masculine singular. The participle expresses an ongoing or imminent action from the speaker's perspective ("I am the one sending away"), rather than a simple past or future finite verb.
- pe.nei.Khem ("before you", H6440G + H9026) — construct noun pe.nei ("face/before") with pronominal suffix, forming the idiom "from before you," i.e., from the speakers' presence.
What the text says
The verse divides into two clauses joined by ki ("for/that", H3588A), a particle that here introduces the grounds for the preceding prohibition. The first clause uses 'al ("may not", H0408) with the jussive ti.ta.me.'U to issue a negative command in the hithpael stem, emphasizing that the addressees would be the agents of their own defilement. The second clause shifts to the niphal perfect nit.me.'U for the same root, describing the nations' defilement as an already-completed state.
Both clauses share the phrase be.khol 'eleh ("by all these [things]", H9003+H3605+H0428), repeated verbatim, which ties the addressees' potential action grammatically to the nations' prior action — same referent ("these things"), same verb root, but different stem and aspect (jussive prohibition vs. perfect completed fact).
The final clause identifies "the nations" (ha.go.Yim, H1471A+H9009) through a relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("which", H0834A), where the participle me.sha.Le.ach casts the first-person speaker as currently engaged in sending these nations away "from before you" (mi.pe.nei.Khem).
Differences between versions
The LXX renders me.sha.Le.ach ("[am] about to send away", H7971G) with ἐξαποστέλλω, a present-tense verb matching the Hebrew participle's ongoing sense. The Vulgate instead uses ejiciam, a future-tense form ("I will expel"), shifting the temporal framing from the Hebrew's participial "sending" to a future action.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.