Leviticus 18:3

Summary

Leviticus 18:3 instructs the addressees (grammatically "you all," masculine plural) not to act according to the practices of Egypt, where they previously dwelt, nor according to the practices of Canaan, where they are being brought, and not to walk in the statutes of these peoples.

Key words

• ma.'a.Seh ("deed/practice of", H4639K) — masculine singular construct noun, appears twice, each time governing a following place name ("deed of Egypt," "deed of Canaan"); the construct form binds it grammatically to the land it describes.
• ta.'a.Su ("you will do", H6213A) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural, repeated twice; the imperfect aspect conveys ongoing or future action, here functioning as a prohibition with the negation lo'.
• me.Vi' ("[am] about to bring", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) participle, masculine singular, referring to the speaker ('a.Ni, "I"); the participle marks an action in progress or imminent, distinguishing it from the completed ye.shav.tem ("you dwelt").
• chu.ko.tei.hem ("their statutes", H2708 + H9028) — feminine plural construct noun with third person masculine plural suffix, the object of the final prohibition.
• te.Le.khu ("you will walk", H1980I) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural, forming the closing prohibition with lo', distinct in verb root from the two prior ta.'a.Su prohibitions.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a triple parallel structure, each unit closing with a negated imperfect verb: lo' ta.'a.Su ("you will not do") appears twice, followed by lo' te.Le.khu ("you will not walk"). The first two units are grammatically symmetrical — ke.ma.'a.Seh 'e.retz-X 'a.Sher... ("according to the deed of the land of X, which...") — differing only in the verb tense used in the relative clause: ye.shav.tem (qal perfect, "you dwelt," a completed past action) for Egypt, versus me.Vi' (hiphil participle, "I am bringing," a continuing/imminent action) for Canaan. This verbal contrast marks a temporal distinction between the land already left and the land not yet entered.

The third clause shifts vocabulary: instead of ma.'a.Seh ("deed/practice"), it uses chu.ko.tei.hem ("their statutes," from H2708), and instead of ta.'a.Su ("to do"), it uses te.Le.khu ("to walk," from H1980I). This produces a movement from prohibiting the reproduction of specific deeds/customs to prohibiting the following of a broader body of statutes, using the idiom "to walk in" (halakh be-) rather than "to do."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first lo' ta.'a.Su with a passive future, οὐ ποιηθήσεται ("it will not be done"), where the Hebrew has an active second-person plural ta.'a.Su ("you will do"). The second occurrence of the same Hebrew verb is rendered by the LXX with an active οὐ ποιήσετε ("you will not do"), matching the Hebrew person and voice more closely. The Vulgate uses distinct Latin verbs for the parallel Hebrew ta.'a.Su occurrences — facietis and agetis — where the Hebrew repeats the identical verb form both times.