Leviticus 19:10

Summary

The verse instructs that a vineyard owner must not strip the vines a second time nor gather the fallen grapes, but must leave these remains for the poor person and the sojourner. The command closes with a self-identification formula: "I am Yehovah your God."

Key words

• te.'o.Lel ("you will glean", H5953B) — piel imperfect, second person masculine singular; the piel stem here denotes a repeated or intensive stripping action (gleaning a second time over the vineyard), negated by lo' ("not", H3808).
• Fe.ret ("[the] fallen grape[s] of", H6528) — masculine singular construct noun, linked to kar.me.kha ("your vineyard", H3754+H9021), referring specifically to grapes that have dropped rather than been harvested.
• te.la.Ket ("you will gather", H3950) — piel imperfect, second person masculine singular; parallels te.'o.Lel in form and is likewise prohibited by lo' ("not", H3808).
• ta.'a.Zo ("you will leave", H5800A) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, contrasting with the two preceding piel prohibitions; this is a positive command (simple stem) rather than a negated one.
• 'a.Ni ("I", H0589) followed by Yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the personal pronoun placed before the divine name forms the self-declarative formula closing the verse.

What the text says

The verse is built on three parallel verbal clauses, each governed by a second-person masculine singular verb referring to the addressee's actions toward "your vineyard" (kar.me.kha, H3754+H9021, appearing twice, once in verse-initial position with ve- "and", H9002, and once in construct with Fe.ret, "fallen grape[s] of", H6528). The first two clauses use piel-stem imperfects — te.'o.Lel ("you will glean", H5953B) and te.la.Ket ("you will gather", H3950) — both negated by lo' ("not", H3808), producing a structural parallelism: "your vineyard you will not glean... and the fallen grapes of your vineyard you will not gather." The piel stem in both verbs marks an intensive or repeated action, distinguishing a secondary, thorough pass over the vines from a single harvest.

The third clause shifts to the qal stem with ta.'a.Zo ("you will leave", H5800A), not negated, indicating what is required rather than prohibited. Its object is marked by the object marker 'o.Ta (H0853) with suffix -m ("them", H9038), referring back to the ungleaned/ungathered produce. The beneficiaries are marked with prefixed prepositions: le- ("for the", H9005) attached to 'a.Ni ("poor [person]", H6041) and la- ("for the", H9005) attached to Ger ("sojourner", H1616). The verse closes with the formula 'a.Ni Yah.weh 'e.lo.hei.khem ("I [am] Yehovah, God of your [pl.]"), where 'e.lo.hei (H0430G) is a masculine plural construct noun taking the second-person plural suffix -khem (H9026), shifting from the singular address of the commands to a plural addressee in this closing formula.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders te.'o.Lel ("you will glean", H5953B) as ἐπανατρυγήσεις ("you will glean/harvest a second time"), matching the intensive/repetitive sense of the piel. The Vulgate compresses the two prohibited actions (te.'o.Lel and te.la.Ket) into a single clause, "racemos et grana decidentia congregabis" ("you will not gather clusters and fallen grains"), merging what the Hebrew presents as two distinct verbs and objects (Fe.ret, "fallen grape[s] of", H6528, being the object only of the second verb in Hebrew).