Leviticus 20:23

Summary

The verse prohibits following the customs of the nations that are being expelled, giving as justification that these nations committed "all these things" and that this provoked divine rejection. The sentence uses two verbal chains: a prohibition in the imperfect and a narrative sequence in the perfect/waw-consecutive describing the nations' actions and the resulting reaction.

Key words

• techLekhu ("you will walk", H1980I) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural: expresses ongoing or future action, here negated to form a prohibition ("you shall not walk/follow").
• chukkot ("statutes of", H2708) — feminine plural construct noun, linking to "the nation" that follows; construct state means it must be read as "statutes of X," not standing alone.
• meshalleach ("[am] about to send away", H7971G) — piel participle, masculine singular: the piel stem intensifies the action of sending, and the participle form marks it as an ongoing/imminent action attributed to the speaker ("I" who is sending away).
• asu ("they have done", H6213A) — qal perfect, 3rd person plural: marks a completed action, referring to what the nations did prior to the reaction described next.
• aqquts ("I loathed", H6973) — qal form introduced by the narrative va (H9001), 1st person singular: the narrative vav chains this verb sequentially to the prior perfect, presenting it as a resulting event ("and then I loathed").

What the text says

The verse opens with a negated imperfect verb, lo teLekhu ("you will not walk", H3808 + H1980I), which functions as a durative prohibition against a manner of conduct rather than a single act. This verb governs the prepositional phrase be-chukkot ha-goy ("in the statutes of the nation", H9003 + H2708 + H9009 + H1471A), where the construct chain chukkot ha-goy ties the noun "statutes" directly to "the nation," meaning the object of the prohibition is a defined set of practices belonging to that nation.

The relative clause asher ani meshalleach mi-penei-khem ("which I am sending away from before you") uses a piel participle (meshalleach, H7971G) to describe the speaker's action as an ongoing process rather than a completed one, distinguishing it from the perfect-tense verbs used later for the nations' actions.

The final clause begins with ki ("for/that", H3588A), introducing the causal or explanatory basis for the prohibition: et kol elleh asu ("all these they have done", H0853 + H3605 + H0428 + H6213A), using the qal perfect to mark this as a completed action preceding the response. The narrative vav on va-aqquts ("and I loathed", H9001 + H6973) sequences this response directly after the completed action of "doing," presenting a cause-effect structure within the narrative.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders aqquts ("I loathed", H6973) with ἐβδελυξάμην ("I abhorred/detested"), and the Vulgate uses abominatus sum ("I have abominated"), both intensifying the sense beyond the more neutral "loathed" of the Hebrew root. The Hebrew chukkot ("statutes of", H2708) is rendered by the LXX as τοῖς νομίμοις ("the lawful customs") and by the Vulgate as legitimis ("legal practices"), both using legal terminology not explicit in the Hebrew noun itself, which more broadly denotes "statutes" or "prescribed practices."