Leviticus 20:11

Summary

The verse addresses a man who has sexual relations with his father's wife, stating that this act constitutes an uncovering of the father's nakedness. Both parties involved are subject to death, with responsibility for their deaths attributed to themselves.

Key words

• yishkav ("he will lie with", H7901I) — qal imperfect, describing the ongoing or hypothetical future action that triggers the case being addressed.
• gillah ("he has uncovered", H1540I) — piel perfect, an intensive verbal stem indicating a completed act of exposing or violating what was covered.
• mot-yumetu ("certainly...they will be put to death", H4191) — combines an infinitive absolute (mot) with a hophal imperfect (yumetu), a construction that intensifies the verb by pairing the infinitive with the finite form; the hophal stem marks the action as causative-passive, meaning the subject undergoes the killing rather than performing it.
• d"mei-hem ("their bloods", H1818) — masculine plural construct with pronominal suffix; the plural form of "blood" is idiomatic in this legal formula.
• sh'nei-hem ("both of them", H8147) — dual cardinal number in construct with a pronominal suffix, explicitly marking that the penalty applies to two parties.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with ve-'ish 'asher ("and a man who"), a conditional-relative construction typical of legal casuistic formulations in this chapter. The relative clause yishkav 'et-'eshet 'aviv uses the qal imperfect yishkav ("he will lie with", H7901I) to describe the act, followed by the object marked with 'et (H0853). The phrase 'eshet 'aviv ("wife of his father") is a construct chain: 'eshet ("wife of", H0802H) governs 'aviv ("his father", H0001G + H9023).

The main clause states 'ervat 'aviv gillah — literally "the nakedness of his father he has uncovered." Here 'ervat (H6172) is again in construct with 'aviv, and the verb gillah (H1540I) is piel perfect, placed at the end of the clause after its object, which is a normal Hebrew word order variation used for emphasis on the object. The piel stem intensifies the action beyond a simple "seeing" to an active "exposing" or "violating."

The penalty clause uses the infinitive absolute plus finite verb construction mot-yumetu (H4191), a grammatical device that reinforces certainty — the hophal form yumetu marks the subjects as recipients of the death penalty rather than agents. The dual construct sh'nei-hem (H8147) explicitly binds both parties to this penalty. The closing formula demeihem bam ("their bloods are upon them") uses the plural noun demei (H1818) with a locative prepositional phrase bam (H9003+H9038, "in them"), a fixed idiom attributing the bloodguilt to the parties themselves.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'eshet 'aviv as gynaikos tou patros autou ("wife of his father"), matching the Hebrew construct chain closely. The Vulgate, however, translates this phrase as noverca sua ("his stepmother"), a specific kinship term not present in the Hebrew, which simply says "wife of his father." The Vulgate also renders 'ervat 'aviv ("nakedness of his father") as ignominiam patris sui ("the shame of his father"), interpreting 'ervah (H6172, "nakedness") with a term emphasizing disgrace rather than the more literal "nakedness" preserved in the LXX's apekalypsen ("he uncovered").