Leviticus 19:9

Summary

Leviticus 19:9 gives two agricultural prohibitions tied to harvest time: not to completely reap the edge of one's field, and not to gather the grain that falls during harvesting. Both instructions use intensive (piel) verb forms addressed to the harvester in the second person.

Key words

• tekhalleh ("you will finish/complete", H3615J) — piel imperfect of the root for "to complete, finish." The prohibition lo tekhalleh ("you shall not finish/complete") governs the harvesting of the field's edge, meaning the action of reaping should not extend to completion at that specific area.
• pe'at ("side/edge of", H6285) — construct singular noun, "the edge/corner of." Grammatically bound to sadcha ("your field"), it designates a spatial portion of the field rather than a general boundary.
• leket ("remnant of", H3951) — construct singular noun referring to gleanings, what falls or remains during harvest.
• telaket ("you will gather", H3950) — piel imperfect from the same root as leket, creating a grammatical echo: the noun for "gleanings" and the verb "to glean" share the identical consonantal root, reinforced here by the intensive stem.
• kutzrechem ("harvest", H7114B) — qal infinitive construct with second-person plural suffix, "in your harvesting," setting the temporal frame ("when you harvest") for the entire verse.

What the text says

The verse opens with a temporal clause using the infinitive construct kutzrechem ("in your harvesting of..."), establishing the circumstance under which the following prohibitions apply. The first prohibition, lo tekhalleh pe'at sadcha liktzor ("you shall not finish reaping the edge of your field"), uses the piel form of klh ("to complete"), suggesting the restriction concerns bringing the reaping process to full completion at the field's edge, rather than prohibiting reaping there entirely. The second prohibition, lo telaket, forbids gathering the leket — the grain that falls during the cutting process. The shared root between leket (noun) and telaket (verb) is a grammatical feature visible in the Hebrew but not always reproduced in translation.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the first prohibition as non tondebis usque ad solum superficiem terrae ("you shall not shear down to the bare surface of the ground"), which shifts the sense from a spatial "edge" (pe'ah) of the field toward a description of cutting height or closeness to the ground. The LXX, by contrast, uses ou syntelesete... ekthersai ("you shall not complete... to reap fully"), which more closely mirrors the Hebrew's use of "complete" (klh) tied to the action of reaping the field's edge.