Leviticus 25:17

Summary

The verse prohibits wronging one's fellow and commands fearing God, closing with the self-identification formula "I am Yehovah your God." The Hebrew moves between singular and plural address forms within a single sentence, a feature visible in the grammar but often flattened in translation.

Key words

• toNu ("you will maltreat", H3238) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, 2nd person plural: a collective, ongoing prohibition addressed to a group, not a single individual.
• amiTo ("his fellow", H5997) — masculine singular construct with 3rd person singular suffix ("his fellow-citizen"), pairing with ish ("anyone", H0376I) to frame the object of the prohibition at the individual level.
• yaReta ("you will fear", H3372H) — qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine singular: switches to singular address and continues the sequence begun by the prohibition, functioning as a command that follows from it.
• Eloheikha ("your God", H0430G + H9021) — construct plural noun with singular suffix ("your," singular): the object of fear is tied to the individual addressee.
• Eloheikhem ("your God", H0430G + H9026) — same construct noun, now with plural suffix ("your," plural): the closing formula addresses the group as a whole.

What the text says

The sentence opens with a plural prohibition: ve-lo toNu ("and you [pl.] shall not maltreat"), using the hiphil of yanah (H3238), a causative form indicating an action inflicted upon another rather than a state. The object of this prohibition is specified distributively — ish et-amito, "anyone... his fellow" — using singular nouns even though the verb governing them is plural, a common Biblical Hebrew construction for expressing reciprocal or distributive obligation among members of a group.

The clause then shifts grammatically: ve-yareta ("and you shall fear") is a qal sequential perfect in the singular, continuing the instruction but now addressing the individual. This singular address is reinforced by the suffix on Eloheikha ("your God," singular "your"). The causal clause ki ani YHWH Eloheikhem ("for I am Yehovah, your God") returns to the plural suffix (-khem), addressing the community as a whole. This grammatical alternation — plural prohibition, singular fear-command, plural closing formula — is present in the Hebrew morphology itself, independent of any translation choice.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening prohibition with a third-person singular jussive, θλιβέτω ἄνθρωπος ("let a man not afflict"), where the Hebrew uses a second-person plural imperfect addressed directly to the audience. The Vulgate similarly shifts structure: it opens with a plural imperative (nolite affligere, "do not [pl.] afflict") but then moves to a distributive singular subject, timeat unusquisque ("let each one fear"), for the second clause, differing from the Hebrew's second-person singular yaReta.