Leviticus 21:7

Summary

Leviticus 21:7 prohibits marrying two categories of women: one who is a zonah ("prostitute", H2181) or chalalah ("profaned", H2491B), and one who is gerushah ("divorced", H1644H) from her husband. The verse closes with a causal clause stating that "he" is qadosh ("holy", H6918G) to his God.

Key words

• zonah ("prostitute", H2181) — qal participle, feminine singular; describes a woman characterized by the ongoing action of prostitution, functioning here as a descriptive label for the 'ishah ("woman", H0802G) she qualifies.
• chalalah ("profaned [woman]", H2491B) — feminine singular adjective, joined to zonah by the conjunction va ("and", H9002), forming a paired category of forbidden brides.
• yiqqachu ("they will take", H3947I) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; this verb form appears twice (once per prohibited category), each preceded by the negation lo' ("not", H3808), producing two parallel prohibitive clauses.
• gerushah ("divorced", H1644H) — qal passive participle, feminine singular; marks the woman as having undergone the action of divorce, syntactically parallel to zonah and chalalah as another type of forbidden wife.
• qadosh ("holy", H6918G) — masculine singular adjective, paired with the singular pronoun hu' ("he", H1931), shifting the grammatical number from the plural subject of yiqqachu to a singular referent for the closing statement.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two parallel negative clauses, each following the pattern [object noun + descriptive participle/adjective] + lo' + yiqqachu. The first clause bars taking a woman who is zonah "and" (va, H9002) chalalah, treating these two terms as a linked description of one category of woman. The second clause, introduced by ve'ishah ("and a woman", H0802G+H9002), bars a woman labeled gerushah who is me'isha-h ("from her husband", H0376H+H9024) — the construct plus suffix indicating the specific husband from whom she was separated.

The final clause shifts from the plural verb yiqqachu to the singular pronoun hu' and the singular adjective qadosh, introduced by the causal particle ki ("for/because", H3588A). The referent of hu' is grammatically singular even though the preceding verbs governing the prohibition are plural, and it is linked le-'Elohav ("to his God", H0430G+H9023) using a construct plus third-person singular suffix. The plural form of 'Elohav (H0430G, morphologically plural) with a singular predicate qadosh is a common Hebrew construction and does not by itself indicate grammatical plurality of meaning.

Differences between versions

The LXX condenses the sentence structure: it renders both prohibited categories (porne and bebelōmenē) under a single verb lēmpsontai ("they will take"), then introduces the divorced woman (ekbeblēmenēn apo andros autēs) without repeating a second prohibitive verb, differing from the Hebrew's two full parallel clauses each with lo' yiqqachu. The LXX also adds kai hagiasei auton ("and he will sanctify him"), a clause with no corresponding Hebrew words in this verse as given. The Vulgate renders the closing causal clause with a plural verb, "consecrati sunt" ("they are consecrated"), where the Hebrew has the singular hu' ("he") and singular adjective qadosh.