Leviticus 25:35
וְכִֽי־יָמוּךְ אָחִיךָ וּמָטָה יָדוֹ עִמָּךְ וְהֶֽחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּֽךְ׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וְכִֽי־יָמ֣וּךְ אָחִ֔יךָ וּמָ֥טָה יָד֖וֹ עִמָּ֑ךְ וְהֶֽחֱזַ֣קְתָּ בּ֔וֹ גֵּ֧ר וְתוֹשָׁ֛ב וָחַ֖י עִמָּֽךְ׃
Ἐὰν δὲ πένηται ὁ ἀδελφός σου καὶ ἀδυνατήσει ταῖς παρὰ σοῦ, ἀντιλήμψῃ αὐτοῦ ὡς προσηλύτου καὶ παροίκου, καὶ ὁ ἀδελφός σου μετὰ σοῦ.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Si attenuatus fuerit frater tuus, et infirmus manu, et susceperis eum quasi advenam et peregrinum, et vixerit tecum,
“‘Si uno de tus hermanos se empobrece y no puede mantenerse por sí mismo entre ustedes, deberás ayudarlo, y vivirá contigo como si fuera un extranjero o un huésped.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y cuando tu hermano empobreciere, y se acogiere á ti, tú lo ampararás: como peregrino y extranjero vivirá contigo.
Now if your countryman becomes destitute and cannot support himself among you, then you are to help him as you would a foreigner or stranger, so that he can continue to live among you.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse opens a legal case: if a fellow Israelite becomes impoverished and his economic capacity fails "with you," the addressee is instructed to support him, so that this person — described with the terms ger and toshav — may continue living among the community.
Key words
- yamukh ("he will become impoverished", H4134) — qal imperfect, marking the conditional trigger of the case (the entry point of the "if" clause).
- matah ("it will slip", H4131) — qal sequential perfect continuing the condition; paired with yad ("hand", H3027I) it forms the idiom "his hand slips," describing loss of means.
- hecheZakta ("you will strengthen", H2388G) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, the main instruction: causing someone else to become strong, i.e., providing support.
- ger ("a sojourner", H1616) — masculine singular noun, one of two terms applied to the impoverished person's resulting status.
- toshav ("a resident alien", H8453A) — masculine singular noun, paired with ger, both nouns standing without a preceding comparative particle in the Hebrew.
- chai ("he will live", H2421) — qal sequential perfect closing the chain, the resulting state after support is given.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of sequential (vav-consecutive) perfects following an initial imperfect: yamukh ("he becomes impoverished") sets the condition, then matah yado ("his hand slips") intensifies it, then hecheZakta ("you shall strengthen him") gives the required action, and finally chai ("he shall live") states the outcome. This chain structure ties condition and consequence tightly together as one continuous legal statement rather than separate sentences.
A notable feature is the placement of ger ("sojourner", H1616) and toshav ("resident alien", H8453A) immediately after bo ("in him") in "you will strengthen in him." In the Hebrew word list, these two nouns appear juxtaposed to the pronoun without any preposition or particle of comparison marked between them and the preceding clause — they stand as bare nouns modifying or in apposition to the impoverished "brother," rather than introduced by an explicit "as" or "like."
Differences between versions
The Hebrew presents ger and toshav as juxtaposed nouns without an overt comparative marker in the word-by-word data. The LXX inserts ὡς ("as") before προσηλύτου ("proselyte") and παροίκου ("sojourner"), explicitly framing the impoverished person's treatment as comparable to that of a foreigner. The Vulgate similarly adds "quasi" ("as if") before "advenam et peregrinum." The Spanish (RV1909, SBLIBRE) and English (BSB) translations likewise insert explicit comparative language ("como," "as if," "as you would"), producing a clearer analogy than the bare Hebrew juxtaposition supplies on its own.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.