Leviticus 26:2

Summary

Leviticus 26:2 commands the addressees, in plural, to keep the shabbetotai ("my sabbaths", H7676) and to fear/revere the miqdashi ("my sanctuary", H4720), closing with the self-identification formula ani YHWH ("I am Yehovah", H0589/H3068).

Key words

• shabbetotai ("sabbaths", H7676) — feminine plural noun in construct form with the suffix -i ("my", H9020), producing "my sabbaths"; the construct chain ties the sabbaths directly to the speaker.
• tishmoru ("you will keep", H8104) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural; the imperfect aspect conveys an action to be carried out ongoing or in the future, addressed to a collective "you."
• miqdashi ("my sanctuary", H4720) — masculine singular noun in construct with the same suffix -i, paralleling shabbetotai and forming a second object of reverence.
• tira'u ("you will fear", H3372) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, parallel in form to tishmoru, establishing a grammatical symmetry between the two commands.
• YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068) — the divine name, appended after the pronoun ani ("I", H0589), forming the closing self-identification.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel verbal clauses, each following the pattern object + imperfect verb, both in 2nd person masculine plural: et-shabbetotai tishmoru ("my sabbaths you will keep") and u-miqdashi tira'u ("and my sanctuary you will fear"). The direct object marker 'et (H0853) precedes the first object but is absent before the second, which is instead introduced simply by the conjunction u- ("and", H9002). Both objects carry the same 1st person singular suffix -i ("my"), linking sabbaths and sanctuary equally to the speaker. The verse closes with the independent personal pronoun ani ("I") followed immediately by the name YHWH, a fixed formula that appears elsewhere in this chapter without a copula—the Hebrew simply juxtaposes "I" and "Yehovah."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders miqdashi ("my sanctuary") as τῶν ἁγίων μου ("my holy things"), a plural abstraction rather than the singular concrete noun "sanctuary" found in the Hebrew. The LXX also inserts the preposition ἀπὸ ("from") before this phrase with the verb φοβηθήσεσθε ("you will fear"), producing "you will fear from my holy things," whereas the Hebrew tira'u takes miqdashi directly as its object without a preposition. The Vulgate's pavete ad sanctuarium meum ("be in awe toward my sanctuary") similarly adds the preposition ad ("toward"), not present in the Hebrew construction.