Leviticus 19:32

Summary

Leviticus 19:32 instructs the addressee to rise before gray hair, to honor the face of an old person, and to fear his God, closing with the self-identification "I am Yehovah." The verse links physical deference toward the elderly with a theological formula that grounds the instruction.

Key words

• sei.vah ("gray hair", H7872) — feminine singular abstract noun used metonymically for an aged person; it is the object of the preposition mi ("from", H9006) in the phrase mi-penei sei.vah ("from the face of gray hair").
• ta.Kum ("you will arise", H6965B) — qal imperfect, second person masculine; marks an action presented as ongoing/future obligation rather than a completed command.
• ha.dar.Ta ("you will honor", H1921) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), continuing the verbal chain begun by ta.Kum; this form links the two actions as a single narrative sequence rather than two isolated commands.
• ya.Re.ta ("you will fear", H3372H) — qal sequential perfect, same chain-continuing form, joining "fearing God" grammatically to the preceding acts toward the elderly.
• 'a.Ni ("I", H0589) followed by Yehovah (H3068G) — an independent personal pronoun plus the divine name, forming the self-identifying formula that closes the verse.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of three verbs connected by the narrative/sequential vav (H9001): ta.Kum ("you will arise"), ha.dar.Ta ("you will honor"), and ya.Re.ta ("you will fear"). The first verb is a plain qal imperfect, while the second and third are qal sequential perfects — a grammatical pattern that binds them together as one continuous instruction rather than three separate statements. The construct phrases penei sei.vah ("face of gray hair", using H6440G) and penei zaken ("face of an old person", using H6440H) both use panim ("face") in construct form, a common Hebrew idiom for expressing presence or regard — "before" or "in the presence of" someone. The final clause, 'a.Ni Yehovah ("I [am] Yehovah"), lacks a copula, as is standard in Hebrew nominal clauses; the pronoun and name stand juxtaposed, which the versions render with an explicit "am."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders sei.vah ("gray hair") with the adjective πολιοῦ ("gray-haired one"), shifting from the Hebrew's abstract noun to a personal descriptor. For zaken ("old person", H2205H) the LXX uses πρεσβυτέρου ("elder"), while the Vulgate uses "senis" ("old man"), both narrowing the Hebrew's general adjective toward a more specific social category. In the closing formula, the Hebrew reads simply 'a.Ni Yehovah ("I am Yehovah"), the Vulgate matches this closely with "Ego sum Dominus," but the LXX expands it to "ἐγώ εἰμι κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν" ("I am the Lord your God"), adding "your God" and shifting the pronoun to plural "your," which is not present in the Hebrew wording of this verse.