Leviticus 26:12

Summary

Leviticus 26:12 declares a reciprocal relationship expressed through three sequential verbal actions: the divine subject will walk among the people, will become their God, and the people in turn will become "a people" belonging to that subject. The verse uses parallel grammatical constructions to establish this mutual belonging.

Key words

• hit.ha.lakh.Ti ("I will walk about", H1980I) — hithpael (reflexive/iterative) stem, sequential perfect, first person. The hithpael form conveys a continuous or repeated back-and-forth movement, not a single walk, and continues the narrative sequence begun earlier in the passage.
• Tokh.Khem ("midst of you", H8432 + H9026) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, meaning "in the midst of you (plural)." The construct state ties the noun directly to the following suffix, producing "your midst."
• ha.Yi.ti ("I will become", H1961) — qal stem, sequential perfect, first person. This continues the same verbal chain as hit.ha.lakh.Ti, marking an ongoing sequence of divine action rather than an isolated statement.
• lo.Him ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun used with a singular referent, preceded by the double preposition la...le ("for/into"), a construction that marks the resulting role or category ("to become as God to you").
• tih.yu- ("you will become", H1961) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural. Unlike the two preceding perfects, this verb is imperfect, marking ongoing or future action on the human side of the relationship, paired with 'Am ("a people", H5971A).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of three clauses joined by the vav (H9001/H9002), each shifting focus: first the subject's movement (hit.ha.lakh.Ti bekhem, "I will walk in your midst"), then a declared status (ve.ha.yi.ti lakhem le.lo.him, "I will become to you as God"), and finally the people's own designated status (ve.'attem tih.yu-li le.'am, "and you will become to me as a people"). The verbs in the first two clauses are sequential perfects (veqatalti form), which in this narrative context project future continuation from a preceding sequence, while the final verb shifts to an imperfect (tih.yu), marking the human side as an ongoing or resulting state rather than a completed sequential action.

The double preposition le...le ("for...into") in both le.lo.him and le.'am constructions marks predicate function — literally "to be to you for God" and "to be to me for a people" — a Hebrew idiom expressing "to serve as" or "to become," which the target languages render simply as "be your God" and "be my people," collapsing the double-preposition structure into a single predicate.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hit.ha.lakh.Ti ("I will walk about", H1980I) with ἐνπεριπατήσω, matching the iterative/reflexive sense of movement within a space. The Vulgate's ambulabo ("I will walk") is a simpler verb without the hithpael's reflexive nuance rendered explicitly, though the phrase inter vos ("among you") preserves the sense of Tokh.Khem ("midst of you", H8432). All versions collapse the Hebrew's double le...le predicate construction (H9005 + H9030/H0430G; H9005 + H5971A) into direct possessive phrasing ("your God," "my people"), without a formal equivalent to the Hebrew's "to be to X for Y" structure.