Leviticus 21:5

Summary

The verse presents three prohibitions concerning bodily practices, likely in the context of mourning rites: making a bald patch on the head, shaving the edge of the beard, and cutting the flesh. Each prohibition is expressed with the negation lo' ("not", H3808) followed by an imperfect verb describing the forbidden action.

Key words

• yik.re.chah ("they will make bald", H7139) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; paired with the cognate noun korchah to intensify the specific act of creating baldness.
• korchah ("baldness", H7144) — feminine singular noun functioning as the direct object of the verb yikrechu, forming a figura etymologica (verb and object from the same root).
• fe'at ("side/edge of", H6285) — feminine singular construct, linking to zekanam ("their beard", H2206) to specify the exact location (the edge of the beard) affected by the prohibition.
• yegallechu ("they will shave", H1548) — piel imperfect, third person masculine plural; the piel stem denotes an intensive or deliberate action of shaving, distinct from the simple qal used for baldness.
• yisretu ("they will cut", H8295) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; paired with the cognate noun saratet ("cut", H8296B), again forming a figura etymologica emphasizing the specific act of cutting.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure repeats the same pattern three times: negation (lo') + imperfect verb + object, each targeting a distinct area of the body — head, beard-edge, and flesh (skin). Two of the three prohibitions use a figura etymologica, where the verb and its object share the same root: yikrechu korchah ("they will make-bald [a] baldness") and yisretu saratet ("they will cut [a] cut"). This construction in Biblical Hebrew often serves to intensify or specify the exact nature of the action being prohibited, rather than leaving it as a general reference.

The verb for the beard (yegallechu, piel stem, H1548) differs grammatically from the verb for baldness (yikrechu, qal stem, H7139), even though both are usually translated as "shave" or "make bald" in English. The piel stem for the beard action may indicate a more deliberate or intensive shaving process, distinguishing it from the simpler baldness-verb, though the English and Spanish translations here do not preserve the stem difference. The construct chain pe'at zekanam ("edge of their beard") specifies that only the edge or corner of the beard is in view, not the entire beard.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds the phrase "ἐπὶ νεκρῷ" ("over a dead body") after "φαλάκρωμα" ("baldness"), a contextual detail not present in the Hebrew text of this verse, which does not mention a corpse. The Vulgate renders korchah and pe'at zekanam together as "caput... nec barbam" ("head... nor beard"), omitting the Hebrew's specific construct phrase pe'at ("edge of") and instead referring to the beard as a whole rather than its edge.