Leviticus 19:29

Summary

The verse prohibits a father from profaning his daughter by making her engage in prostitution, warning that such an act will lead the land itself to "prostitute itself" and become filled with wickedness. The sentence moves from an individual prohibition to a collective consequence affecting the land.

Key words

• te.cha.Lel ("you profane", H2490) — piel stem (intensive) with jussive negation 'al, expressing a direct prohibition against defiling/profaning.
• haz.no.Ta ("making prostitute [herself]", H2181) — hiphil infinitive, the causative stem: the father is not to cause the daughter to become a prostitute, an action done to her.
• tiz.Neh ("it will prostitute itself", H2181) — qal imperfect, the simple (non-causative) stem of the same root used in word 7. Here the land itself is the subject acting, not being caused to act.
• mal.'Ah ("it will be full", H4390) — qal sequential perfect, linking this clause to what precedes it as a continuing consequence in the narrative chain (marked by the vav on u.mal.'Ah).
• zi.Mah ("wickedness", H2154) — feminine singular noun, the resulting condition that fills the land.

What the text says

The Hebrew builds its warning through a grammatical shift in stem for the same root, znh (H2181), rather than through different verbs. In the first clause, the root appears as a hiphil infinitive (haz.no.Ta, "to cause to prostitute"), describing an action imposed on the daughter by another party. In the second clause, the same root appears as a qal imperfect (tiz.Neh, "it will prostitute itself"), describing the land as the grammatical subject performing the action on its own account. This stem alternation lets the Hebrew connect the daughter's coerced acts to the land's own state without repeating a different verb.

The clause sequence also shifts negation types: 'al (H0408) with the piel jussive forbids the immediate action, while lo' (H3808) with the qal imperfect denies a future state. The final clause drops the negation and uses a sequential perfect (mal.'Ah), a verb form that carries forward the logical result: once the land "prostitutes itself," it consequently "becomes full" of zimmah.

Differences between versions

The LXX translates tiz.Neh with the same verb root (ἐκπορνεύσει, "will fornicate") used for the hiphil clause, collapsing the Hebrew's stem distinction between causative and simple action. The Vulgate restructures the second half as a purpose/result clause ("ne contaminetur terra et impleatur piaculo" — "lest the land be contaminated and filled with sin"), using passive verbs (contaminetur, impleatur) where the Hebrew has active verbs (tiz.Neh, mal.'Ah) with the land as the acting subject. The BSB similarly renders the land's action passively ("the land will be prostituted"), diverging from the Hebrew's active grammatical construction.