Leviticus 26:33

Summary

The verse announces a threefold punishment: dispersal among the nations, pursuit by a drawn sword, and the resulting desolation of both land and cities. The four clauses form a single continuous sequence describing consequences that follow one another.

Key words

• 'e.za.Reh ("I will scatter", H2219) — piel imperfect, first person; the intensive stem stresses a thorough, forceful scattering rather than a simple departure.
• ha.ri.ko.Ti ("I will draw", H7324) — hiphil sequential perfect, causative; literally "to empty out" (a sheath), used here for drawing a sword — the causative stem marks that the subject actively causes the sword's blade to be exposed.
• cha.rev ("sword", H2719) — feminine singular noun, the object drawn out and set "after" the people.
• hay.Tah ("it will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, feminine; links the land's fate to the preceding actions in the same narrative chain.
• char.Bah ("a waste place", H2723) — feminine singular noun describing the end state of the cities, paired with the qal imperfect yih.Yu ("they will be", H1961).

What the text says

The sentence moves through four linked verbal actions connected by the narrative vav (H9001) after the initial conjunction ve (H9002): scattering ('e.za.Reh), drawing the sword (ha.ri.ko.Ti), the land becoming desolate (hay.Tah... shemamah), and the cities becoming ruins (yih.Yu... charbah). The first verb is an imperfect in the piel stem, giving it an intensifying force — the scattering is not casual but total. The second verb shifts to a sequential perfect in the hiphil stem, a causative form built on the root meaning "to empty," so that "drawing a sword" is literally "emptying it out" of its sheath, with the sword personified as continuing "after" ('acharei, H0310A) the people, in construct with the pronominal suffix "you" (khem, H9036).

The land and cities are each marked with construct nouns bearing possessive suffixes — 'artzechem ("your land") and 'areichem ("your cities") — both governed by H9026 suffixes, distinguishing them grammatically from the object suffixes (H9036) used for "you" in the earlier scattering and pursuit. The land's desolation uses a qal sequential perfect (hay.Tah) while the cities' ruin uses a qal imperfect (yih.Yu), showing the Hebrew narrative chain shifting verb forms while maintaining continuity of the sequence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders cha.rev ("sword", H2719) with a personified subject, ἡ μάχαιρα ἐπιπορευομένη ("the sword going/pursuing"), making the sword itself the active pursuer, whereas the Hebrew has the divine subject "I" performing the action of drawing the sword out "after you." The Vulgate's evaginabo post vos gladium ("I will unsheathe a sword after you") preserves the first-person causative sense closer to the Hebrew hiphil form. The BSB and SBLIBRE similarly retain a personal subject ("I will draw," "los perseguiré") rather than the LXX's personified moving blade.