Leviticus 19:35

Summary

The verse prohibits committing injustice in the domain of judgment/measurement, specifically naming four areas: legal judgment, length measurement, weight, and volume. It is formulated as a direct negative command addressed to a plural audience.

Key words

• lo' ("not", H3808) — negation combined with the imperfect to form a durative prohibition, forbidding an ongoing or repeated action rather than a single instance.
• ta'aSu ("you will do", H6213A) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, addressing the community collectively rather than an individual.
• 'Avel ("injustice", H5766A) — masculine singular noun functioning as the direct object, naming the abstract wrong being forbidden.
• mishPat ("judgment", H4941G) — masculine singular noun preceded by ba ("in the", H9003), marking the first sphere in which injustice is prohibited.
• mishuRah ("volume", H4884) — feminine singular noun, the last in a series of measurement terms, joined by the conjunction u ("and", H9002).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with lo' ta'aSu 'Avel ("you will not do injustice"), establishing a single verbal action — "doing injustice" — that is then distributed across four prepositional phrases, each introduced by ba ("in the", H9003): ba-mishPat ("in the judgment"), ba-miDah ("in the measurement"), ba-mishKal ("in the weight"), and u-va-mesuRah ("and in the volume"). The repetition of the preposition ba before each noun creates a rhythmic list structure, treating legal judgment and physical measurement as parallel domains where the same prohibited action — 'Avel, "injustice" (H5766A) — can occur.

The verbal form ta'aSu is qal imperfect, which in prohibitions with lo' typically expresses a standing, repeated restriction rather than a one-time act. The plural addressee (2nd person masculine plural) frames this as a communal instruction rather than one directed at a specific individual, such as a judge or merchant. Notably, the abstract noun 'Avel ("injustice") is not repeated before each measurement term; it appears once and grammatically governs all four spheres by virtue of the shared verb.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the list with three terms — metrois ("measures"), stathmiois ("weights"), and zygois ("balances/scales") — differing from the Hebrew's four terms by omitting a direct equivalent for miDah ("measurement," possibly length) as distinct from mesuRah ("volume"), and introducing "balances" (zygois) not explicitly present as a separate Hebrew noun in this verse. The Vulgate follows a four-term structure similar to the Hebrew (judicio, regula, pondere, mensura), though it renders miDah as regula ("rule/standard") and mesuRah as mensura ("measure"), a labeling that does not fully preserve the Hebrew's distinction between the two measurement-related nouns. The Spanish RV1909 similarly reflects this ambiguity, translating miDah as "medida de tierra" (land measurement) and mesuRah as "otra medida" (another measure).