Leviticus 27:2

Summary

The verse opens a legal instruction: Yehovah commands Moses to speak to the Israelites about the case of a person who makes an extraordinary vow, framed in terms of "your valuation" of persons dedicated to Yehovah. Grammatically the sentence is unfinished — it introduces a casuistic legal formula whose resolution continues in the following verses.

Key words

• daBer ("speak", H1696) — piel imperative, the intensive command form opening the divine instruction to Moses.
• yafLi' ("he will make hard/extraordinary", H6381) — hiphil imperfect of the root pala'; the causative stem turns "being extraordinary" into "making [a vow] extraordinary," describing a vow of unusual or difficult character.
• Neder ("a vow", H5088) — masculine singular noun, the direct object of yafli', naming the legal object under discussion.
• 'erKekha ("your valuation of", H6187) — construct noun with 2ms suffix; grammatically it is "the valuation-of-you," i.e., a valuation assigned by the addressee (typically understood as the priest/appraiser in this legal context).
• nefaShot ("persons", H5315) — feminine plural noun in construct with 'erkekha, indicating that the valuation concerns human beings as its category, plural and unspecified until later verses narrow it down.

What the text says

The verse follows the standard casuistic legal pattern found elsewhere in Leviticus: an imperative (daBer) followed by a vav-sequential perfect ('amarTa, "and you will say"), which together form the narrative command chain introducing direct speech. The case itself begins with 'ish ki ("a man, if…"), a conditional construction typical of legal codes, followed by the hiphil verb yafli' governing the object neder. The hiphil stem of pala' does not simply mean "to vow" but "to make extraordinary/difficult," suggesting the vow described is of an unusual or heightened kind, distinct from an ordinary vow.

The phrase be-'erkekha nefashot is syntactically dense: 'erek ("valuation") is in construct with the 2ms suffix -kha ("your"), then linked to the plural noun nefashot ("persons"). This produces a phrase best read as "according to your valuation of persons," where the addressee (grammatically "you") is the one performing the appraisal. The plural nefashot leaves open, at this point in the text, how many or what kind of persons are meant — the specifics (age, sex, valuation amounts) are supplied only in the verses that follow. The clause ends with la-Yehovah ("to/for Yehovah"), marking the vow's ultimate recipient.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the conditional clause as hos an eúxētai euchēn ("whoever vows a vow"), omitting an explicit equivalent for nefashot ("persons") and instead using timēn tēs autou ("value of his own"), collapsing the Hebrew's plural "persons" into a more generic singular reference. The Vulgate similarly narrows nefashot to a singular animam suam ("his own soul/life"), where the Hebrew has the plural nefashot. Both LXX and Vulgate therefore present the valuation as pertaining to a single soul/life rather than to "persons" in the plural as the Hebrew construct phrase indicates.