Leviticus 19:16

Summary

Leviticus 19:16 contains two prohibitions addressed to an individual within the community: not to circulate as a slanderer among one's kin, and not to "stand upon" the blood of one's neighbor. The verse closes with the formula "I am Yehovah," attaching the divine name to the command.

Key words

• te.Lekh ("you will go about", H1980G) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular; paired with rakhil it forms an idiomatic expression of habitual movement, "going about" as a talebearer.
• ra.Khil ("a slanderer", H7400) — masculine singular noun functioning almost adverbially with the verb "to go," describing the manner of the forbidden walking.
• ta.'a.Mod ("you will stand", H5975G) — qal imperfect, second masculine singular; combined with the preposition 'al ("on/against", H5921A) and dam ("blood of", H1818, construct), it forms a second idiom distinct from ordinary "standing."
• re.'E-kha ("your neighbor", H7453 + H9021) — construct noun with second-person suffix, marking the person to whom the blood belongs; the same root appears earlier in the chapter for communal relations.
• 'a.Ni Yehovah ("I [am] Yehovah", H0589 + H3068G) — independent pronoun plus the divine name, forming the closing self-identification typical of this chapter's legal sentences.

What the text says

The verse is built from two parallel negative clauses, each using lo' ("not", H3808) plus a qal imperfect verb, followed by the self-declaration "I am Yehovah." The first clause pairs te.Lekh ("you will go", H1980G) with the noun ra.Khil ("slanderer", H7400) rather than an adverb, producing the idiom "you will not walk [as] a slanderer among your kinspeople" — the noun functions to characterize the type of movement rather than naming a separate object. The second clause uses a different idiom: ta.'a.Mod 'al-dam ("you will stand upon/against the blood of", H5975G + H5921A + H1818), where the construct chain dam re.'E-kha ("blood of your neighbor") specifies whose blood is in view. Both idioms are compact expressions whose literal components (walking, standing, blood) carry an extended sense not fully captured by rendering them word-for-word into English. The closing formula 'ani Yehovah attaches no verb of its own; it stands as a nominal sentence, "I [am] Yehovah," sealing the two prohibitions with the divine name alone, without qualifying the pronoun or the name with any additional epithet in the Hebrew.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders rakhil ("slanderer", H7400) as δόλῳ ("with deceit"), a broader term than the Hebrew noun's specific talebearing sense. The Vulgate splits the first idiom into two nouns, criminator ("accuser") and susurro ("whisperer"), where the Hebrew has a single verb-plus-noun construction. For the second clause, the Vulgate adds contra ("against") explicitly, while the LXX uses ἐφ' ("upon"), closer to the Hebrew 'al. The closing formula in the LXX reads "ἐγώ εἰμι Κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν" ("I am the Lord your God"), adding "your God," an element absent from the Hebrew 'ani Yehovah, which contains only the divine name.