Leviticus 20:8

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

You shall keep my statutes, and do them. I am Yahweh who sanctifies you.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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Word by word

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חֻקֹּתַ֔י

chuqqâh

H2708

“statutes · my”

Noun, Common, Both, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 1st Person, Common, Singular

Appears 105× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 26:5

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H2706

TWOT: 728b

statute, ordinance, limit, enactment, something prescribed - statute

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

8: words
7: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Grammatical profile

3 verbs
2 nouns
1 pronoun
2 particles

Verb forms

וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם֙ Qal · Sequential Perfect
וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם Qal · Sequential Perfect
מְקַדִּשְׁכֶֽם Piel · Participle Active

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 14 words from the Hebrew and 16 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 8 Hebrew tokens and 13 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Leviticus 20:8 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Exodus 31:13 "Speak also to the children of Israel, saying, 'Most assuredly you shall keep my Sabbaths: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that you may know that I am Yahweh who sanctifies you.
James 1:22 But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Leviticus 21:8 You shall sanctify him therefore; for he offers the bread of your God: he shall be holy to you: for I Yahweh, who sanctify you, am holy.
Matthew 5:19 Whoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and teach others to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Matthew 7:24 "Everyone therefore who hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock.
Matthew 12:50 For whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother."
2 Thessalonians 2:13 But we are bound to always give thanks to God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief in the truth;

Revelation 22:14 Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city.
Leviticus 18:4–5 You shall do my ordinances, and you shall keep my statutes, and walk in them: I am Yahweh your God.
Leviticus 19:37 You shall observe all my statutes, and all my ordinances, and do them. I am Yahweh.'"
Ezekiel 20:12 Moreover also I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Yahweh who sanctifies them.
Ezekiel 37:28 The nations shall know that I am Yahweh who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them forevermore.
John 13:17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
1 Corinthians 1:30 But of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption:

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Leviticus 20:8 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם֙ אֶת חֻקֹּתַ֔י וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָ֑ם אֲנִ֥י יְהוָ֖ה מְקַדִּשְׁכֶֽם

You shall keep my statutes, and do them. I am Yahweh who sanctifies you.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Leviticus 20:8 Septuagint · lemma form

καί φυλάσσω ὁ πρόσταγμα ἐγώ καί ποιέω αὐτός ἐγώ κύριος ὁ ἁγιάζω σύ

And you⌃ shall observe my ordinances, and do them: I am the Lord that sanctifies you.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וְתִטְּרוּן יָת קְיָמַי וְתַעְבְּדוּן יָתְהוֹן אֲנָא יְיָ מַקְדִשְׁכוֹן

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וְתִטְרוּן יַת קְיָמַי וְתַעַבְדוּן יַתְהוֹן אֲנָא הוּא יְיָ מְקַדִשְׁכוֹן

And observe My statutes and perform them: I am the Lord who sanctifies you.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Leviticus 20:8 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Lev 20:8 And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I [am] the LORD which sanctify you.

Ver. 8. I am the Lord which sanctify you.] Ut acti agatis, that ye may trade with your talents, sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and lives, and walk up to your principles.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joseph Benson's Commentary

Lev 20:8. Who sanctify you — Who separate you from all nations, and from their impurities and idolatries, to be a peculiar people to myself; and who give you my grace to keep my statutes.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them,.... Not only those respecting the above things, but all others, which would be a means of preserving them from sin, and of promoting holiness in their lives and conversations:

I am the Lord which sanctify you: who had separated and distinguished them from all other people on earth, and who had given them holy laws, as the means of holiness; and who only could and did sanctify internally, by his Spirit and grace, such or them as were sanctified in heart, as well as outwardly.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Sanctify you, and order you to keep at a distance from the impure worship of other nations. (Haydock)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

i.e. Who separated you from all nations, and from their impurities and idolatries, to be a peculiar people to myself, and therefore I will not suffer you to follow their examples. Or, who really sanctify you, and give you my grace to do what I require, i.e. to keep my statutes. Or the argument is this, Those idols and idolatries will defile you and make you worse, but I only and my service will sanctify you and make you better.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

8. I am the Lord which sanctify you — Set you apart from all uncleanness and idolatry, and impart to you grace to continue in this state of separation. The sanctification of the nature by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost may have been a rare experience under the old covenant. It is promised to all believers under the spiritual dispensation.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

Who sanctify you - Who separate you from all nations, and from their impurities and idolatries, to be a peculiar people to myself; and who give you my grace to keep my statutes.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

unfoldingWord translationNotes

Door43 World Missions Community

General Information:

Yahweh continues telling Moses what the people must do.

You must keep my commands and carry them out

The words "keep" and "carry out" mean basically the same thing. They are used together in order to emphasize that the people must obey God. (See: Parallelism)

must surely be put to death

This can be translated in active form. AT: "you must surely put to death" (See: Active or Passive)

translationWords

command

Yahweh

set apart

curse

ancestor

die

guilt

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Leviticus, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 8 words (7 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is chuqqâh (“statute”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word chuqqâh carries the sense “statute.” How does it shape the verse?
Exodus 31:13 shares this passage’s theme. How do the two illuminate each other?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
The verb «וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם֙» is Qal Sequential Perfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Joseph Benson's Commentary read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 8 Hebrew ↔ 13 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 10 words in this verse.
7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.