Leviticus 20:9

Summary

Leviticus 20:9 establishes that a person who curses his father or his mother is to be put to death. The verse repeats the completed act of cursing and closes with the formula "his blood is upon him," attributing legal responsibility for the death to the offender himself.

Key words

• 'ish 'ish ("a person, a person", H0376G) — the doubling of the same noun functions distributively, meaning "whoever, any person," marking the law as universally applicable rather than referring to a specific individual.
• yekalel ("he will curse", H7043) — piel imperfect, an intensive stem indicating a forceful or deliberate act of cursing, framed here as a future/hypothetical condition introduced by ki ("if", H3588A).
• mot yumat ("certainly he will be put to death", H4191) — pairs the qal infinitive absolute mot with the hophal imperfect yumat; the infinitive absolute intensifies the finite verb, and the hophal stem marks the action as passive and causative (someone causes him to be put to death), producing the emphatic "he shall surely be put to death."
• qilel ("he has cursed", H7043) — same root as yekalel but in the piel perfect, shifting from the earlier conditional/imperfect framing to a completed, stated fact: the cursing has occurred.
• damav ("his bloods", H1818) — masculine plural construct of "blood," used idiomatically in the plural to refer to blood-guilt or responsibility for a violent death, followed by bo ("in/on him", H9033) locating that guilt on the offender.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conditional particle ki ("if", H3588A) followed by the doubled noun 'ish 'ish (H0376G), a grammatical construction that turns a single noun into a distributive expression covering any individual within the class "person." The relative clause 'asher yekalel ("who will curse", H0834A + H7043) uses the piel imperfect, describing the cursing as a hypothetical or repeatable future action, with 'et-'aviv ve'et-'immo ("his father and his mother", H0001G + H0517) marked by the direct object particle 'et (H0853) and construct nouns carrying pronominal suffixes ("his").

The consequence is stated with the infinitive absolute plus finite verb construction mot yumat (H4191), a common Hebrew mechanism for emphasis, here rendered in the hophal stem to express the passive, causative sense "he shall surely be put to death." The clause then restates the offense — 'aviv ve'immo qilel ("his father and his mother he has cursed") — this time using the piel perfect of the same root qalal (H7043), shifting grammatical aspect from the conditional/future framing of the first clause to a completed, declarative statement of fact, which grammatically closes the case before pronouncing the final formula. The verse ends with damav bo (H1818 + H9033), a fixed idiomatic phrase using the plural construct "his bloods" plus the preposition be- ("in/on") with a suffixed pronoun, placing responsibility for the resulting death on the person who cursed, rather than assigning it to those who carry out the sentence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yekalel / qilel (H7043, "curse") with κακῶς εἴπῃ / κακῶς εἶπεν ("speak evil of"), a descriptive periphrasis rather than a single verb of cursing. The Vulgate uses maledixerit / maledixit ("curse/speak evil"), closer to a direct equivalent of the Hebrew root. The LXX also translates the final formula not as "his blood is upon him" but as ἔνοχος ἔσται ("he shall be liable/guilty"), differing from the Hebrew's blood-idiom preserved in the Vulgate's sanguis ejus sit super eum ("his blood shall be upon him").