Imamat 19:15

Justice, Love, and Propriety

19:15 “‘You ¹  must not deal unjustly in judgment: ²  you must neither show partiality to the poor nor honor the rich. ³  You must judge your fellow citizen fairly. ⁴ 

Imamat 20:10

20:10 If a man ⁵  commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, ⁶  both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

[19:15]  ¹ tc Smr has the singular rather than the plural “you” of the MT, which brings this verb form into line with the ones surrounding it.

[19:15]  ² tn Heb “You shall not do injustice in judgment” (NASB similar); cf. NIV “do not pervert justice.”

[19:15]  ³ tn Heb “You shall not lift up faces of poor [people] and you shall not honor faces of great.”

[19:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “In righteousness you shall judge your fellow citizen.”

[20:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “And a man who.” The syntax here and at the beginning of the following verses elliptically mirrors that of v. 9, which justifies the rendering as a conditional clause.

[20:10]  ⁶ tc The reading of the LXX minuscule mss has been followed here (see the BHS footnote a-a). The MT has a dittography, repeating “a man who commits adultery with the wife of” (see the explanation in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 328). The duplication found in the MT is reflected in some English versions, e.g., KJV, ASV, NASB, NIV.