Leviticus 19:13

Summary

Leviticus 19:13 prohibits two related actions against a fellow member of the community: oppressing or exploiting him, and robbing him. It then adds a specific case: the wages of a hired laborer must not remain unpaid overnight until morning.

Key words

• ta.'a.Shok ("you will oppress", H6231) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, expressing a prohibited ongoing or future action against another person.
• re.'a.-kha ("your neighbor", H7453 + H9021) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, identifying the object of the prohibition as someone in relation to "you" specifically.
• tig.Zol ("you will rob", H1497) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, parallel in form to ta.'a.Shok, forming a pair of prohibited acts.
• ta.Lin ("it will remain overnight", H3885A) — qal imperfect, third person feminine singular; the subject is the "wage" (pe.'u.Lat, feminine noun), so the verb agrees with the wage itself, not with the person.
• pe.'u.Lat sa.Khir ("wage of a hired laborer", H6468 + H7916) — construct chain: "wage" is the construct-state noun, "hired laborer" the genitive-like modifier, together forming the single subject of the clause.

What the text says

The verse divides into two grammatical units. The first unit contains two parallel prohibitions built on the same pattern: negation lo' (H3808) plus qal imperfect second-person verb. The first prohibition, lo'-ta.'a.Shok 'et-re.'a.kha ("you will not oppress your neighbor"), uses the direct object marker 'et (H0853) to mark re.'a.kha as the grammatical object. The second, ve.lo' tig.Zol ("and you will not rob"), lacks an explicit object in the Hebrew text as given, though the referent carries over from the first clause.

The second unit shifts the grammatical subject. Rather than the addressee ("you") acting as subject, the subject becomes pe.'u.Lat sa.Khir ("the wage of a hired laborer"), and the verb ta.Lin is feminine to agree with the feminine noun pe.'u.Lat. This produces a construction where the wage itself is described as the one who might "remain overnight" (lo'-ta.Lin... 'ad-bo.ker, "it will not remain until morning"), rather than a direct statement that "you will not withhold" payment. The prepositional phrase 'i.te.kha ("with you", H0854 + suffix) locates where the wage would improperly remain — in the possession of the employer.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the third clause with a passive-like construction, οὐ μὴ κοιμηθήσεται ὁ μισθὸς ("the wage will surely not be caused to sleep"), keeping "wage" (μισθός) as subject, matching the Hebrew's feminine-subject structure. The Vulgate instead uses opus mercenarii ("the work of the hired man") as subject of morabitur ("will delay/tarry"), shifting the noun from "wage" to "work," a lexical divergence from the Hebrew pe.'u.Lat ("wage"). The English BSB translation restructures the clause entirely with "you" as subject ("you must not withhold"), which obscures the Hebrew's grammatical subject (the wage) in favor of the human agent.