Leviticus 26:30

Summary

Leviticus 26:30 continues a series of divine threats: YHWH declares he will destroy the high places, cut down the incense altars, and pile the corpses of the people upon the corpses of their idols. The verse ends with a statement that "my soul" will abhor the people.

Key words

• hishmadti ("I will destroy", H8045) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, 1st person; opens the chain of consecutive future actions attributed to YHWH.
• hikhrati ("I will cut down", H3772G) — hiphil sequential perfect, 1st person; parallel structure to the previous verb, continuing the same action-chain.
• natati ("I will put", H5414L) — qal sequential perfect, 1st person; shifts from destruction verbs to a placement verb, introducing the corpses clause.
• pigrei ("corpses of", H6297) — masculine plural construct, used twice in the verse (of "you" and of "the idols"), creating a grammatical parallel between the two groups of corpses.
• ga'alah ("it will abhor", H1602) — qal sequential perfect, 3rd feminine singular, agreeing with the grammatically feminine subject nafshi ("my self/soul", H5315I).

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four clauses joined by the narrative vav (H9001), each carrying a sequential perfect verb in the first person (except the last, which shifts subject to nafshi, "my soul/self"). The first three verbs — hishmadti, hikhrati, natati — form a rhythmic triad of first-person actions against the cultic objects: high places (bamotei-khem, H1116), incense altars (chammanei-khem, H2553), and finally the placement of corpses. The repetition of the construct noun pigrei ("corpses of", H6297) twice in immediate succession — first for "your corpses," then for "the corpses of your idols" — creates a deliberate syntactic mirroring: the people's own bodies are set grammatically parallel to the discarded remains of the idols they had venerated (gillulei-khem, H1544).

The final clause changes grammatical subject from the divine "I" to nafshi ("my self," H5315I), a feminine singular noun, which governs the feminine verb ga'alah ("it will abhor," H1602). This shift means the sentence's grammatical actor is no longer "I" directly but "my soul/self," a construction the Hebrew text preserves through subject-verb gender agreement.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders bamotei-khem ("your high places," H1116) as τὰς στήλας ("the steles/pillars"), a more specific architectural term than the Hebrew's general cultic-site word. For chammanei-khem ("your incense altars," H2553), the LXX gives τὰ ξύλινα χειροποίητα ("the wooden handmade things"), a descriptive paraphrase rather than a direct equivalent. The Greek text for the final clause reads καὶ ἡ ψυχή μου ὑμῖν ("and my soul to you"), lacking an expressed verb corresponding to ga'alah ("it will abhor," H1602). The Vulgate, by contrast, supplies "abominabitur vos anima mea" ("my soul will abhor you"), matching the Hebrew verb-subject structure. The Vulgate also renders the corpses clause as "Cadetis inter ruinas idolorum vestrorum" ("you will fall among the ruins of your idols"), shifting the grammatical subject from YHWH's placing action (natati, H5414L) to the people's own falling.