Leviticus 25:22

Summary

The verse describes agricultural continuity after a sabbatical year: people will sow in the eighth year while still eating stored produce from an earlier harvest, continuing to eat old grain until the ninth year's harvest arrives.

Key words

• ze.ra'.Tem ("you will sow", H2232) — qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine plural, continuing a chain of instructions begun earlier in the passage.
• sha.Nah ha.she.mi.Nit ("the eighth year", H8141 + H8066) — feminine singular noun with feminine ordinal number, marking a specific point in the agricultural/sabbatical cycle.
• ya.Shan ("old harvest", H3465H) — masculine singular adjective, appearing twice (lines 13 and 24), describing produce from a previous harvest still being consumed.
• te.Vu.'a.Ta-h ("its produce", H8393 + H9024) — feminine singular noun in construct form with a 3rd person feminine singular suffix ("her"), referring back to the ninth year.
• to.khe.Lu ("you will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, denoting ongoing or future action, contrasting with the earlier perfect form of the same root ('a.khal.Tem, line 9).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of sequential verbs connected by the narrative vav (u., H9001; va., H9001): "you will sow... and you will eat... until... you will eat." This structure links sowing in ha.sha.Nah ha.she.mi.Nit ("the eighth year", H8141/H8066) with continued eating of ya.Shan ("old harvest", H3465H) produce, extending temporally through ha.sha.Nah ha.te.shi.'It ("the ninth year", H8141/H8671).

A grammatical shift occurs between the two occurrences of the eating verb from the root H0398. The first instance, 'a.khal.Tem (line 9), is a qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative sequence of completed future actions typical of this legal-narrative style. The second instance, to.khe.Lu (line 23), is a qal imperfect, marking ongoing or repeated action — the text shifts from stating a single sequential action ("you will eat") to describing a continued state ("you will keep eating") that persists until bo' ("comes", H0935G, infinitive construct) — literally "until the coming of" — te.Vu.'a.Ta-h ("its produce", H8393 with 3rd feminine singular suffix H9024), referring to the ninth year's harvest.

The doubling of ya.Shan ("old harvest", H3465H) at both the middle and the end of the verse frames the entire eating period as consumption of previously stored grain, bracketing the timespan between the eighth and ninth years.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final phrase as παλαιὰ παλαιῶν ("old of old things" or "very old"), a doubled construction not present in the Hebrew, which simply repeats ya.Shan ("old harvest", H3465H) as a single adjective without intensification. The Vulgate's donec nova nascantur ("until new things are born") diverges from the Hebrew's 'ad bo' te.vu.'a.tah ("until the coming of its produce"), introducing the verb "to be born" where the Hebrew has the infinitive bo' ("comes", H0935G).