Leviticus 22:13

Summary

The verse addresses the case of a priest's daughter who becomes a widow or is divorced and has no offspring: she may return to her father's house and eat from the priestly food as she did in her youth, but no outsider may eat from it.

Key words

• vat- ("a daughter of", H1323G) — construct form linking her directly to kohen ("priest", H3548), establishing that her right to eat priestly food derives from this filial relationship, not from marriage.
• gerushah ("a divorced [woman]", H1644H) — Qal passive participle, feminine singular, marking her as one who has been divorced (a state resulting from another's action) rather than describing an active verb.
• zera' ("offspring", H2233H) paired with 'ein ("not", H0369) — the construction zera' 'ein lah ("offspring there-is-not to-her") states the absence of children as the condition permitting her return.
• shavah ("she will return", H7725G) — Qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative sequence begun by the imperfect tihyeh ("she will be", H1961); it marks this clause as the consequence following the widowhood/divorce condition.
• zar ("stranger", H2114A) — adjective describing anyone outside the qualifying categories, subject of the negated verb yokhal ("he will eat", H0398), contrasting with the woman's permitted tokhel ("she will eat", H0398) in the same verse.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a conditional chain: ki ("if", H3588A) introduces the condition tihyeh 'almanah u-gerushah ("she will be a widow and divorced"), followed by a second condition ve-zera' 'ein lah ("and offspring there-is-not to-her"). Both conditions use verbless or participial constructions typical of legal/case law style in this chapter. The apodosis begins with the sequential perfect shavah ("she will return"), which in Hebrew narrative syntax continues the temporal/logical sequence set up by the initial imperfect verb, producing a "if X, then Y" structure without needing an explicit "then."

The phrase ki-ne'ureiha ("like her youth", built from ki "like" + ne'urei "youths of" + suffix "her") compares her current eating rights to a prior state — before her marriage, when she lived under her father's roof. The double construct chain mi-lechem 'avi-ha ("from the food of her father") specifies the source of what she eats, reusing the same paternal-food formula that appears again for the general prohibition. The closing clause reverses subject and verb: zar lo'-yokhal bo ("a stranger, he will not eat in it"), placing zar ("stranger", H2114A) in fronted position for emphasis, contrasting structurally with the daughter's permitted eating stated moments earlier.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders gerushah ("divorced [woman]", H1644H, a passive participle) as ἐκβεβλημένη ("cast out"), a participle with a similar passive sense but a different semantic root (expulsion rather than the specific legal term for divorce). The Vulgate uses repudiata ("repudiated/divorced"), closer to a marital-legal sense. Where the Hebrew has zar ("stranger", H2114A), the LXX has ἀλλογενής ("one of another race/kind"), and the Vulgate has alienigena ("foreign-born"), both slightly narrowing the term toward ethnic/foreign otherness rather than the broader Hebrew sense of "unauthorized outsider."