Leviticus 25:9

Summary

The verse commands sounding the shofar ("ram's horn", H7782) on the tenth day of the seventh month, identified as the Day of kippurim ("atonements", H3725). The instruction is stated twice, first with a singular verb form and then with a plural one, framing the date formula between them.

Key words

• ha'avarTa ("you will cause to pass through", H5674A) — hiphil sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine singular; opens the instruction addressed to a single addressee.
• shofar ("ram's horn", H7782) — appears twice, first in construct form (shofar teru'ah, "horn of a loud blast") and later in absolute form, without the construct link to teru'ah.
• teru'ah ("sound of a loud blast", H8643) — feminine singular noun specifying the type of sound the horn produces, used only with the first occurrence of shofar.
• kippurim ("atonements", H3725) — masculine plural noun forming the phrase "day of the kippurim," the only place in this verse where the day is named rather than dated numerically.
• ta'aviru ("you will cause to pass", H5674A) — hiphil imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural; same root and causative stem as ha'avarTa, but shifted to plural addressees and a different verbal aspect (imperfect vs. sequential perfect).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built in two parallel halves sharing the same causative verb root H5674A ("to cause to pass through/pass"), commonly used here for sounding a horn. The first half uses ha'avarTa, a singular sequential perfect, and introduces the horn with a construct phrase, shofar teru'ah ("horn of a blast-sound"), specifying the acoustic quality of the sound. This first clause also supplies the date through two prepositional phrases: "in the seventh month" and "on the tenth of the month."

The second half restates the command with ta'aviru, now an imperfect verb in the plural, addressing multiple people rather than one. Here the horn is named again, but without the construct link to teru'ah — simply shofar, "a horn." This second clause replaces the numeric date with the named day, "the day of the kippurim," and adds the spatial scope: "in all your land" (kol-'artzekem, H3605 + H0776G with 2nd person plural suffix H9026). The repetition of the causative verb with a change in grammatical person (singular then plural) and aspect (perfect then imperfect) creates a structural frame around the date/day identification.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders both Hebrew occurrences of the causative verb with forms of διαγγελεῖτε ("you will proclaim"), shifting the semantic focus from "causing the horn to pass" to "announcing," and pairs this with σάλπιγγος φωνῇ ("with the sound of a trumpet") for the first instance and σάλπιγγι ("with a trumpet") for the second. The LXX also places the phrase "in all your land" both at the beginning and the end, while the Hebrew places it only once, at the close of the verse. The Vulgate condenses the Hebrew's two-part repeated structure into a single clause with one verb, clanges ("you shall sound"), not repeating the command as the Hebrew and LXX do.