Leviticus 18:8

Summary

The verse prohibits uncovering the 'ervat ("nakedness of", H6172) of the father's wife, and explains that this act constitutes the 'ervat ("nakedness of", H6172) of the father himself. The text establishes an identity: the wife's nakedness and the father's nakedness are treated as the same legal category.

Key words

• 'er.Vat ("[the] nakedness of", H6172) — feminine singular construct noun, appearing twice (positions 1 and 7). As a construct form it must be followed by another noun to complete its meaning ("nakedness of X"), and its repetition structurally links the two halves of the verse.
• 'e.shet- ("[the] wife of", H0802H) — feminine singular construct, syntactically binding "wife" to "father" as a single unit ("wife-of-your-father"), so the prohibited object is not "a wife" in general but specifically this relational figure.
• te.ga.Leh ("you will uncover", H1540I) — piel imperfect, second person masculine singular. The piel stem carries intensive/causative force ("to uncover" in a deliberate, active sense), and the imperfect aspect frames this as an ongoing or future prohibition rather than a single past event.
• hi' ("it/she", H1931) — third person feminine singular pronoun, closing the verse by grammatically pointing back to 'er.Vat (feminine noun), making explicit the equivalence stated between the two nakedness-phrases.

What the text says

The verse is built in two symmetrical halves, each anchored by the construct noun 'er.Vat ("nakedness of", H6172). The first half names the forbidden object: 'er.Vat 'e.shet-'a.Vi.kha ("the nakedness of the wife of your father"), governed by the negated verb lo' te.ga.Leh ("you will not uncover"). The construct chain here stacks three nouns (nakedness — wife — father) into one syntactic unit, meaning the object of the prohibition is defined entirely through its relation to the father, not as an independent category.

The second half repeats 'er.Vat 'a.Vi.kha ("the nakedness of your father") and closes with the pronoun hi' ("it", H1931), feminine to agree with 'er.Vat. This construction states that the nakedness described in the first clause is (grammatically, via the pronoun functioning as a copula-equivalent in a verbless clause) the father's own nakedness — the sentence does not use a separate verb "to be" but relies on the pronoun placed after the noun phrase, a common Biblical Hebrew construction for identity statements.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'er.Vat as aschēmosynē ("indecency/shame"), and the Vulgate as turpitudo ("shame/disgrace"), both abstract nouns paralleling the Hebrew's abstract "nakedness." The Vulgate adds the explanatory particle "enim" ("for/indeed") not present in the Hebrew or Greek, making the causal link between the two clauses more explicit. The BSB and SBLIBRE translations shift from the literal "nakedness" language to interpretive phrases like "sexual relations" and "would dishonor," which are translational renderings not present as separate lexical items in the Hebrew text itself.