Leviticus 24:18

Summary

Leviticus 24:18 states that someone who strikes down the life of an animal must repay it — a life in place of a life. The Hebrew phrasing uses the same word for "life" three times, framing the payment as an exact equivalence rather than a fixed price.

Key words

• makkeh ("[one who] strikes down", H5221) — hiphil participle, masculine singular construct; identifies the agent as the causer of the striking action, grammatically forming a construct chain with what follows.
• nefesh ("[the] life of", H5315) — feminine singular construct; here it is bound to behemah, making the phrase "the life of an animal" rather than "an animal" alone.
• behemah ("an animal", H0929) — feminine singular noun, absolute; completes the construct chain begun by nefesh.
• yeshallemennah ("he will repay it", H7999A + H9034) — piel imperfect with 3rd person feminine singular pronominal suffix; the piel stem intensifies the sense of "repay/make whole," and the suffix "it" refers back to the nefesh struck down.
• tachat ("for", H8478) — masculine singular noun in construct, functioning here as a preposition meaning "in place of," linking the two final occurrences of nefesh.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around a construct chain: makkeh nefesh-behemah, literally "the one striking [the] life of an animal." This construction does not simply say "the one who strikes an animal" — it explicitly names nefesh ("life," H5315) as the object being struck, before specifying that this life belongs to a behemah ("animal," H0929). The verb yeshallemennah carries a feminine suffix agreeing with nefesh, showing that the grammatical object of repayment is that same "life" first mentioned. The closing formula nefesh tachat nafesh ("a life for a life") repeats the noun nefesh twice more, framing the repayment as a life-for-life equivalence rather than a general animal-for-animal transaction. The repeated use of nefesh three times in one verse is a feature the English and Spanish glosses (which render it as "animal") do not preserve.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a clause absent from the Hebrew: καὶ ἀποθάνῃ ("and it dies"), specifying death as a condition not stated in the Hebrew text, which speaks only of "striking" (makkeh). The Vulgate follows the Hebrew's threefold repetition less closely, glossing the repayment as vicarium ("a substitute") and explaining it as animam pro anima ("life for life"), preserving the equivalence but adding an interpretive term ("vicarium") not present in the Hebrew. The SBLIBRE version shifts the sense further, rendering nefesh consistently as "animal" and adding "de otra persona" ("belonging to another person") and "vivo" ("living"), details not present in the Hebrew's construct phrase nefesh-behemah.