Leviticus 21:14

Summary

The verse lists four categories of women that a man is prohibited from taking as a wife, followed by the requirement that he take a virgin from among his own kinspeople. The structure moves from a series of negated categories to one positive, restricted alternative.

Key words

• 'almanah ("a widow", H0490) — feminine singular noun, the first of four forbidden categories, standing at the head of the list.
• gerushah ("a divorced [woman]", H1644H) — qal passive participle, feminine singular; describes a woman as one who "has been driven out," reflecting the passive verbal root rather than a simple noun.
• chalalah ("a [woman] profaned", H2491B) — feminine singular adjective, marking a state of being defiled/profaned rather than an action she performs.
• zonah ("a prostitute", H2181) — qal active participle, feminine singular, literally "the one doing [prostitution]," an ongoing characterization rather than a fixed noun.
• yiqqach ("he will take", H3947I) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular, appearing twice (lines 10 and 17) to frame both the prohibition and the positive instruction, indicating future/ongoing action.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence places all four forbidden categories — 'almanah ("a widow", H0490), gerushah ("a divorced [woman]", H1644H), chalalah ("a [woman] profaned", H2491B), and zonah ("a prostitute", H2181) — before the verb, connected by the conjunction u/va ("and", H9002). This front-loading of the list creates emphasis on the categories themselves before the negated verb yiqqach lo' ("he will not take") appears. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) with the demonstrative 'elleh ("these", H0428) explicitly recaps the list as a single collective object of the prohibition, tying the four terms together grammatically before the negation lo' ("not", H3808).

The second half of the verse is introduced by the compound particle ki 'im ("except", H3588B + H0518B), which sets up a restrictive exception to the prohibition. The permitted alternative is betulah ("a virgin", H1330), qualified by the prepositional phrase me-'ammav ("from his kinspeople", H5971B with pronominal suffix H9023), meaning the virgin must come specifically from his own people. The verb yiqqach ("he will take", H3947I) is repeated here in the same imperfect form as the negated instance, creating a grammatical parallel: the same action verb is first forbidden with the four categories, then permitted with the single qualified category.

Grammatically, note the variation in word-formation across the forbidden categories: gerushah is a passive participle, chalalah is an adjective, and zonah is an active participle — three different morphological types describing three different relationships to the state or action of the woman, though all are rendered as simple nouns in most translations.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders gerushah ("a divorced [woman]", H1644H) as ekbeblēmenēn ("cast out"), emphasizing expulsion, while the Vulgate uses repudiatam ("repudiated"), closer to formal divorce terminology. For chalalah ("a [woman] profaned", H2491B), the LXX has bebēlōmenēn ("profaned/defiled") and the Vulgate sordidam ("sordid/unclean"), showing different shades of the concept of profanation. The Hebrew me-'ammav ("from his kinspeople", H5971B, plural form with suffix) is rendered in singular collective terms in LXX (ek tou laou autou, "from his people") and Vulgate (de populo suo, "from his people"), smoothing the plural construct into a singular collective noun.