Deuteronomy 17:5

Summary

Deuteronomy 17:5 gives the legal procedure following the establishment of guilt described in the preceding verses: the guilty man or woman is to be brought out to the town gates and killed by stoning. The verse repeats the designation "the man or the woman" twice, first introducing them via a relative clause, then restating them as the direct objects of the execution.

Key words

• ho.tzeTa ("you will bring out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: the subject causes the guilty party to go out; continues the narrative chain of instructions with "and."
• 'asher ("who/that", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause describing what "the man or the woman" did.
• 'asu ("they have done", H6213A) — qal perfect, marking the wrongdoing as a completed action prior to the sentence's main verbs.
• sekalTa ("you will stone", H5619) + -m ("them", H9038) — qal sequential perfect with 3rd person masculine plural suffix attached, naming the two people as the object of the stoning.
• va.Metu ("and they will die", H4191) — qal sequential perfect, the final link in the chain of sequential verbs, stating the outcome.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of sequential perfects (ve-hotzeta … u-sekaltam … va-metu), a common construction in legal instruction where each verb continues the sequence begun by the preceding one, producing a "you shall do X, and then Y, and then Z" effect. The grammatical subject throughout is singular "you" (masculine), addressing a single legal agent responsible for carrying out the procedure, even though sekalTa takes a plural object suffix ("them") referring to both the man and the woman.

Notably, the phrase "the man or the woman" appears twice: first with demonstrative pronouns ha-Ish ha-hu ("that man") and ha-ishah ha-hi ("that woman") within the relative clause identifying who committed "this evil thing" (ha-davar ha-ra ha-zeh), and again without demonstratives as the direct objects of "you will stone them," specifying who is to be taken 'el-she'areikha ("to your gates", H8179G construct + H9021 suffix). This double naming is a feature of the Hebrew legal style, restating the subject before the execution clause.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the initial verb as ἐξαρεῖς ("you will remove/take away"), differing from the Hebrew hiphil sense of ho.tzeTa ("cause to go out"). The LXX also shifts to a plural imperative form (λιθοβολήσετε, "you all will stone") for the stoning verb, where the Hebrew sekalTa is singular "you." The Vulgate joins "man" and "woman" with ac ("and") rather than reflecting the Hebrew 'o ("or", H0176A), and it does not repeat the phrase "the man or the woman" as the Hebrew does; it also lacks a distinct final clause corresponding to va.Metu ("and they will die"), ending instead with the passive "lapidibus obruentur" ("they will be crushed with stones").