Leviticus 18:6

Summary

Leviticus 18:6 opens a series of prohibitions on sexual relations among close relatives. It states that no one is to "draw near" to a "flesh-relative" in order to "uncover nakedness," closing with the formula identifying the speaker as Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G).

Key words

• 'ish ("a man", H0376G) — repeated twice in immediate succession, a distributive construction meaning "each and every man," not a plural noun.
• she'Er ("relative of", H7607) — construct form, the first link in a chain meaning "flesh-relative," it cannot stand alone and requires the following noun.
• besaro ("his flesh", H1320 + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, completing the phrase kol-she'er besaro ("any relative of his flesh").
• tikrevu ("you will draw near", H7126G) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural, functioning as a prohibition when preceded by lo' ("not", H3808); it addresses the audience directly rather than describing the "man" in third person.
• galot ("to uncover", H1540I) — piel infinitive construct, paired with 'ervah ("nakedness", H6172) to form the standard idiom for sexual relations used throughout this chapter.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with the doubled noun 'ish 'ish, a distributive idiom that functions like "each and every man" rather than a plural subject. This distributive subject is followed by a construct chain, kol-she'er besaro ("any relative of his flesh"), which stacks three nouns (kol, she'Er, basar) each governing the next, with a possessive suffix ("his") attached to the final term. This chain establishes the category of person the prohibition concerns.

Grammatically notable is the shift from the distributive third-person subject ("each man") to a second-person plural verb, tikrevu ("you all shall not draw near"). The prohibition is thus phrased as a direct address to a plural audience, even though the subject introduced at the start of the verse is grammatically singular and distributive. The verb tikrevu itself, from the root meaning "to approach" (H7126G), is paired with the infinitive galot ("to uncover") plus the noun 'ervah ("nakedness") — a fixed idiomatic expression in this chapter for sexual relations. The verse ends with the self-identifying formula 'ani Yehovah ("I [am] Yehovah"), which uses a personal pronoun plus the divine name without a copular verb, a common formulaic close in this section of Leviticus.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the doubled 'ish 'ish as Ἄνθρωπος ἄνθρωπος (doubled "man"), preserving the distributive repetition, but shifts the verb to third-person singular future (προσελεύσεται, "he will approach"), unlike the Hebrew's second-person plural tikrevu. The Vulgate similarly uses "omnis homo" (singular "every man") with a third-person singular verb ("non accedet"), differing from the Hebrew's direct plural address. Where the Hebrew's construct chain specifies "relative of his flesh" (she'Er besaro), the Vulgate reads "proximam sanguinis sui" ("near one of his blood"), substituting "blood" for "flesh."