Leviticus 19:27

Summary

The verse gives two prohibitions addressed to the Israelite audience: not to round off the pe'ah ("side/edge", H6285) of the head, and not to destroy the pe'ah ("side/edge", H6285) of the beard. Both commands concern the treatment of hair at specific bodily edges — the head and the beard.

Key words

• ta.Ki.fu ("you will round off", H5362B) — Hiphil (causative) imperfect, second person masculine plural: a collective, ongoing/future prohibition addressed to a group ("you all").
• pe.'At ("side/edge of", H6285) — feminine singular construct noun, appearing twice; it does not mean "hair" itself but the "edge/corner" belonging to something (the head, the beard).
• rosh.Khem ("your head", H7218A + H9026) — masculine singular construct noun with second person masculine plural suffix, marking the possessor as the group's "head."
• tash.Chit ("you will destroy/trim", H7843) — Hiphil imperfect, second person masculine singular: shifts from plural to singular address within the same verse.
• ze.ka.Ne.cha ("your beard", H2206 + H9021) — masculine singular construct noun with second person masculine singular suffix.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel negative clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002). Each clause follows the same skeleton: negation (lo', H3808) + verb (Hiphil imperfect) + construct noun pe.'At + a body-part noun bearing a possessive suffix. The construct chain pe.'At rosh.Khem literally reads "the edge of your(pl.) head," and pe.'At ze.ka.Ne.cha reads "the edge of your(sg.) beard." The word pe.'At (H6285) itself denotes an edge, corner, or side, not hair directly — the object being acted upon is the boundary region of the head and of the beard, respectively.

A notable grammatical feature is the shift in grammatical number: the first verb, ta.Ki.fu (H5362B), is second person masculine plural ("you all shall not round off"), matching the plural suffix on rosh.Khem ("your head," plural). The second verb, tash.Chit (H7843), is second person masculine singular ("you shall not destroy"), matching the singular suffix on ze.ka.Ne.cha ("your beard," singular). This alternation between plural and singular address within a single verse is preserved in the Hebrew morphology but is not visible in translations that render both clauses uniformly in the plural or singular for readability. Additionally, the direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslatable) appears before the second pe.'At but not the first, marking the second noun phrase explicitly as a definite direct object of tash.Chit.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first clause as "you will not make a sisoē from the hair of the head," introducing the noun "hair" (κόμη) explicitly, where the Hebrew names only pe.'At ("edge," H6285) without a separate word for hair. For the second clause, the LXX uses φθερεῖτε ("you will destroy/mar") with τὴν ὄψιν ("the appearance/sight") of the beard, differing from the Hebrew's tash.Chit + pe.'At ("edge") construction. The Vulgate renders the verbs as attondebitis ("you will shear/clip") and radetis ("you will shave"), where the Hebrew uses ta.Ki.fu ("round off", H5362B) and tash.Chit ("destroy/trim", H7843) — verbs built on different roots than "shave." The Vulgate also translates pe.'At as comam ("hair") and barbam ("beard") directly, omitting the "edge/side" sense present in the Hebrew construct noun.