Leviticus 26:29

Summary

Leviticus 26:29 states that, as part of the covenant curses, the people will eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters. The verse is built as a parallel bicolon, naming sons first and then daughters as objects of the same action.

Key words

• 'akhalTem ("you will eat", H0398) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the chain of future curses begun earlier in the passage; marks this as a consequence following logically from what precedes.
• beSar ("flesh of", H1320) — masculine singular construct, appearing twice, each time binding to the following noun ("sons"/"daughters") to form "flesh of X."
• beneiKhem ("your sons", H1121A + H9026) — masculine plural construct with second-person masculine plural suffix, identifying the sons as belonging to the addressees.
• benoteiKhem ("your daughters", H1323G + H9026) — feminine plural construct with the same suffix, mirroring the previous phrase for daughters.
• tokheLu ("you will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, same root as the opening verb, closing the sentence with a second finite verb rather than repeating the perfect form.

What the text says

The verse divides into two parallel clauses joined by the conjunction u ("and", H9002). Each clause has the same skeleton: verb + "flesh of" (beSar, H1320) + a construct noun ("sons" or "daughters") + the second-person plural possessive suffix -khem ("your", H9026). The first clause uses 'akhalTem (H0398), a qal sequential perfect that carries forward the narrative chain of curses from the preceding verses. The second clause places the object phrase ("flesh of your daughters") before the verb tokheLu (H0398), which shifts from perfect to imperfect form of the same root, "to eat."

This structural inversion — object-verb order in the second clause versus verb-object order in the first — is a feature of Hebrew parallelism: the two halves say the same thing with sons and daughters as separate but equivalent objects, while varying verb form and word order to avoid flat repetition. The construct chains (beSar beneiKhem, "flesh of your sons") tightly bind the noun "flesh" to its possessor, a construction that a translation with a possessive adjective ("your sons' flesh") or a simple prepositional phrase ("flesh of your sons") can only partly reproduce.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders both Hebrew verbs ('akhalTem, perfect; tokheLu, imperfect) with the same Greek future middle form φάγεσθε ("you will eat") in both clauses, flattening the verbal variation present in the Hebrew. The Vulgate condenses the two-verb, two-clause Hebrew structure into a single clause ("comedatis carnes filiorum vestrorum et filiarum vestrarum"), using one verb for both sons and daughters rather than repeating "eat" as the Hebrew and LXX do.