Leviticus 18:5

Summary

The verse commands the addressee (plural "you") to keep the chuqqot ("statutes", H2708) and mishpatim ("judgments", H4941G) of the speaker. It states that a human being who does these will live by them, and closes with the self-declaration "I am YHWH" (H3068G).

Key words

• she.mar.Tem ("you will keep", H8104G) — qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine plural; continues a chain of commands from the preceding narrative, functioning as an imperative-like instruction.
• chu.ko.Ta + i ("statutes" + "my", H2708 + H9020) — feminine plural noun in construct form with a 1st person suffix, meaning "my statutes"; construct state links it directly to the speaker.
• mish.pa.Ta + i ("judgments" + "my", H4941G + H9020) — masculine plural construct noun with 1st person suffix, "my judgments", paired with the previous term via the conjunction ve ("and", H9002).
• ya.'a.Seh ("he will do", H6213A) — qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular, expressing an ongoing or repeated action within the relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("which", H0834A).
• Chai ("he will live", H2421) — qal sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular, continuing the verbal chain begun by she.mar.Tem; the outcome tied to the doing described by ya.'a.Seh.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of sequential perfects (she.mar.Tem ... va.Chai), a syntactic pattern where each verb continues the force of the one before it, producing a sequence: "you will keep ... and [the one who does them] will live." Between these two chained verbs sits a relative clause, 'a.Sher ya.'a.Seh 'o.Tam ha.'a.Dam ("which ha.'a.Dam ['humankind', H0120G] will do"), using an imperfect verb to describe the doing of the statutes and judgments in a general, repeated sense rather than a single completed act.

The subject of "will live" is not repeated explicitly but is carried by the preceding ha.'a.Dam, and the phrase ba.Hem ("by them", H9003+H9038) refers back to the chuqqot and mishpatim named at the start. The verse closes with the independent pronoun 'a.Ni ("I", H0589) followed by the divine name Yah.weh (H3068G), forming a self-identification formula that stands grammatically apart from the preceding clauses.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a verb not distinctly present in the Hebrew clause structure: καὶ ποιήσετε αὐτά ("and you will do them"), inserting an explicit second command before the relative clause, where the Hebrew integrates "doing" only within the relative clause governed by 'a.Sher. The LXX also expands the closing formula to ἐγὼ κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν ("I am the Lord your God"), whereas the Hebrew has only 'a.Ni Yah.weh ("I am YHWH") without a possessive "your God" and without "God" (θεός) as a separate term. The Vulgate's "Ego Dominus" matches the shorter Hebrew formula, without the addition found in the LXX.