Leviticus 20:5

Summary

Leviticus 20:5 states that God will set his face against the man who gives his offspring to Molech (referenced from the preceding verse) and against his clan, cutting him off from his people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves after Molech.

Key words

• sam.Ti ("I will set", H7760A) — qal sequential perfect, first person, continuing the chain of actions begun in the previous verse.
• pa.Nai ("my face", H6440H) — masculine plural noun in construct with the suffix "my"; the phrase "set my face against" is an idiomatic construction of confrontation.
• hikh.ra.Ti ("I will cut off", H3772I) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, first person: the causative stem marks that the subject actively causes the cutting-off, not merely observes it.
• zo.Nim ("[who] act as prostitutes", H2181) — qal participle, masculine plural, definite by the article ha (H9009): describes an ongoing group identified by continuous action, "those who are/do prostituting."
• le.zo.not ("acting as prostitutes", H2181) — qal infinitive with prefix li (H9005), forming a purpose/manner clause: "in/by prostituting after Molech."

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel sequential-perfect clauses joined by the narrative ve (H9001): "and I will set... and I will cut off." Both verbs carry the independent pronoun ani ("I", H0589) or the first-person verb form, emphasizing the subject's direct agency. The first clause, ve-sam.Ti ani et-panai ba-ish ha-hu u-ve-mishpach.To ("and I will set, I, my face against that man and against his clan"), uses the idiom "set the face against" (panim in construct, H6440H) — a fixed expression of confrontation applied to both the individual (ish, H0376G) and his clan (mishpachto, H4940, in construct with the suffix "his").

The second clause switches to the hiphil verb hikh.ra.Ti (H3772I), a causative form distinct from the qal used later for the participle zo.Nim. The object marker et (H0853) appears three times (lines 4, 17, 20), marking distinctly the direct objects: "his face," "him," and "all those acting as prostitutes." The relative-like construction kol ha-zo.Nim acharav ("all those acting as prostitutes after him") uses the participle zo.Nim to describe an ongoing group action, while the following infinitive lizNot acharei ha-Molekh ("in prostituting after Molech") restates the same root H2181 in a different verbal form, first as descriptive participle then as purpose infinitive — a doubling that in Hebrew reinforces the persistence of the practice through two grammatical aspects of the same verb.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mishpachto ("his clan/family", H4940) with συγγενίαν ("kinship/relatives"), a comparable but not identical semantic field. Where the Hebrew has acharei ha-Molekh ("after Molech", H4432), the LXX reads εἰς τοὺς ἄρχοντας ("toward the rulers"), diverging from the Hebrew proper name Molekh. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew more closely with cum Moloch, preserving the name. The Hebrew participle-plus-infinitive construction (zo.Nim... lizNot, both H2181) is rendered in the Vulgate as consenserunt... fornicarentur, and in the LXX as ὁμονοοῦντας... ἐκπορνεύειν, both versions using two distinct verbs where the Hebrew repeats the same root.