Leviticus 24

## Summary Leviticus 24 records Yahweh's instructions to Moses on two priestly duties — tending the lampstand with pure olive oil and arranging twelve loaves of showbread on the table before Yahweh — followed by a narrative in which a man curses "the Name" and is stoned by the community, and a set of case laws establishing equal penalties for killing humans or animals and for bodily injury ("eye for eye, tooth for tooth"). ## Key words - *tamid* ("continually", H8548) — appears repeatedly (vv.2,3,4,8) marking the lamp-tending and showbread-setting as perpetual, uninterrupted duties, not one-time acts. - *choq olam* / *berit olam* ("a prescribed portion/covenant of perpetuity", H2706/H1285/H5769) — construct phrases meaning "a statute/covenant of forever," used for the priestly portion of showbread (v.9) and the Sabbath arrangement (v.8), framing these as fixed, ongoing obligations. - *yiqqov* ("he slandered/pierced", H5344A) — qal narrative verb describing what the son of the Israelite woman did to "the Name" (v.11); the same root (*noqev*, H5344B) recurs in v.16 for the general law against "slandering" the divine name. - *mot yumat* ("he will certainly be put to death", H4191) — qal infinitive absolute + hophal imperfect, an emphatic doubling construction used three times (vv.16,17,21) to stress the certainty of the death penalty. - *tachat* ("in place of / for", H8478H) — a construct noun functioning as "instead of," structuring the talion formulas in v.18 and v.20 (*nefesh tachat nafesh*, "life for life"; *ayin tachat ayin*, "eye for eye"). ## What the text says The chapter's Hebrew syntax moves through three distinct units linked by the recurring formula *va-yedabber Yahweh el-Mosheh le'mor* ("and Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying," vv.1,13), a narrative-vav construction that marks new divine speech. Verses 1–9 use a chain of sequential perfects (*ve-lakachta*, *ve-afita*, *ve-samta*, *ve-natata*) to lay out step-by-step instructions for Aaron: bringing oil, baking loaves, arranging rows, and placing frankincense — each verb form continuing the imperative force of the initial *tzav* ("command", H6680). The narrative in vv.10–12 and 23 uses classic narrative-vav verbs (*va-yetze*, *va-yinnatzu*, *va-yikkov*) to report a specific incident — a dispute in the camp culminating in someone cursing "the Name" — which becomes the occasion for the general legal statements in vv.15–22. These laws pair a conditional clause (*ish ish ki...*, "any person, if...") with an imperfect verb describing consequence, and use the infinitive-absolute-plus-finite-verb pattern (*mot yumat*, *ragom yirgemu*) to intensify the certainty of the prescribed penalty. The talion formulas in vv.18 and 20 place two identical nouns on either side of *tachat*, producing a symmetrical Hebrew structure ("fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth") that expresses exact reciprocity rather than escalation. ## Differences between versions In v.3, the LXX adds "and his sons" (καύσουσιν αὐτὸν Ἀαρὼν καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ αὐτοῦ) where the Hebrew names only *Aharon* ("Aaron", H0175) as the one tending the lamps. In v.16, the LXX renders the phrase concerning "the whole congregation of Israel" (πᾶσα συναγωγὴ Ἰσραήλ) with an explicit national designation, while the Hebrew *kol ha'edah* ("all the congregation", H5712) does not include "Israel" at that point in the clause. The Vulgate's v.16 repeats the death sentence for blasphemy twice ("morte moriatur... morte moriatur"), a duplication not present as a doublet in the Hebrew, which states the penalty once via *mot yumat*.