Leviticus 25:21

Summary

Leviticus 25:21 states that God will command his blessing for the sixth year, so that the land's produce will suffice for three years. The verse uses two sequential perfect verbs to link a divine action (commanding blessing) with its result (increased yield).

Key words

• tzi.Vi.ti ("I will command", H6680) — piel stem (intensive) sequential perfect, first person; frames the action as an authoritative decree rather than a simple statement.
• bir.kha.T ("blessing", H1293) — feminine singular noun in construct form, followed by the suffix i ("my"), forming "my blessing" as the direct object of the command.
• ha.shi.Shit ("the sixth", H8345 + H9009) — ordinal number, feminine singular, agreeing with sha.Nah ("year", H8141); marks the specific year in the agricultural cycle when this action occurs.
• 'a.Sat ("it will make/produce", H6213H) — qal (simple) stem sequential perfect, third person feminine; the subject is the land or the year itself, producing the te.vu.'Ah ("produce", H8393).
• li.sh.Losh ("for three", H7969 + H9005) — cardinal number in construct form with the preposition li ("for"), governing ha.sha.Nim ("the years", H8141), specifying the duration the produce must cover.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure relies on two verbs in sequential perfect form, both continuing a narrative chain that began earlier in the passage (marked by the initial ve "and" on each verb). The first verb, tzi.Vi.ti ("I will command"), is in the piel stem, an intensive verbal pattern, with a first-person subject — the speaker (identified elsewhere in the chapter) declares an action directed at bir.kha.T-i ("my blessing"), a construct noun phrase meaning "the blessing belonging to me." This blessing is directed la.Khem ("to/for you," plural), during ba.sha.Nah ha.shi.Shit ("in the sixth year").

The second clause shifts to 'a.Sat ("it will make/produce"), a qal (basic stem) sequential perfect with a feminine subject — grammatically this could refer to ha.sha.Nah ("the year") or the land implied by context, since no explicit subject noun appears in this clause. This verb governs ha.te.vu.'Ah ("the produce") as its object, marked by the untranslated direct object marker 'et. The final phrase, li.sh.Losh ha.sha.Nim ("for three of the years"), uses a construct relationship between the cardinal number "three" and "the years," indicating the span of time the produce is meant to cover.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tzi.Vi.ti ("I will command") as ἀποστέλλω ("I send"), and the Vulgate similarly uses dabo ("I will give") rather than a verb of commanding. The Hebrew verb H6680 specifically denotes commanding or ordering, while both the Greek and Latin shift the sense toward sending or giving the blessing directly, without the intermediate concept of a command.