Leviticus 26:24

Summary

The verse presents God's declaration of a reciprocal response: walking "in opposition" toward the addressed group and striking them "sevenfold" for their sins. The sentence uses emphatic first-person pronouns twice, underscoring that the divine agent himself performs both actions.

Key words

• ha.lakh.Ti ("I will walk", H1980I) — qal sequential perfect, first person; continues a narrative chain, here meaning "to walk/proceed" in a figurative sense of conduct or behavior.
• 'a.Ni ("I", H0589) — independent personal pronoun, doubled with the interjection 'af ("also", H0637) immediately before it, producing emphatic "I, even I."
• Ke.ri ("contrariness", H7147) — masculine singular noun, object of the preposition be ("in", H9003), forming the phrase "in contrariness/opposition."
• hi.kei.Ti ("I will strike down", H5221) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, first person; parallel in form to ha.lakh.Ti, continuing the same sequence of divine action.
• cha.to.tei.khem ("your sins", H2403B + H9026) — feminine plural noun in construct form with a second person plural suffix, meaning "sins of you (pl.)."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two parallel clauses joined by the narrative ve ("and", H9001), each headed by a first-person sequential perfect verb: ha.lakh.Ti ("I will walk") and hi.kei.Ti ("I will strike down"). Both clauses repeat the independent pronoun 'a.Ni / 'A.ni ("I", H0589) after an emphatic particle — 'af ("also", H0637) in the first clause and gam ("also", H1571) in the second — producing the doubled emphasis "I, even I" in each half of the verse. This repetition of the pronoun alongside the verbal person-marking is grammatically redundant (the verb form already indicates "I") but serves to stress the identity of the agent performing the action.

The first clause specifies the manner of the action with the phrase be-Ke.ri ("in contrariness", H7147), preposition plus noun, describing how the walking is carried out — "in a manner of opposition" toward the addressed group, marked by 'i.ma.khem ("with you", H5973A + H9036). The second clause names the object of the striking with the direct object marker 'et (H0853) plus the suffix khem ("you", H9036), followed by the numeral She.va' ("sevenfold", H7651) functioning adverbially to intensify the verb, and the causal phrase 'al-chatotei.khem ("on account of your sins", H5921A + H2403B + H9026), using the construct plural noun chatotei ("sins of...") to specify the cause of the striking.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders be-Ke.ri ("in contrariness", H7147) with the Greek phrase "ᾦ πλαγίῳ" (a slanting/oblique manner), while the Vulgate uses "adversus incedam" ("I will proceed against"), both expressing the idea of opposition but through different figurative images than the Hebrew noun Ke.ri. The Vulgate and LXX both omit an explicit equivalent for the first clause's ve-ha.lakh.Ti ("and I will walk") as a distinct verb of motion, instead merging it into a general expression of hostile intent ("adversus incedam" / "πορεύσομαι... πλαγίῳ").