Deuteronomy 19:11

Summary

Deuteronomy 19:11 opens a legal case (protasis) describing a man who hates his neighbor, ambushes him, rises against him, strikes him fatally, and then flees to one of the asylum cities mentioned earlier in the chapter. The verse sets up the scenario of premeditated killing that the following verses will treat differently from accidental killing.

Key words

• yihyeh ("he will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, opens the conditional clause with ve-khi ("and if", H9002/H3588A), marking the whole sentence as a hypothetical case.
• sone ("hating", H8130) — qal participle, describing an ongoing state or disposition rather than a single action; the hatred is background, not the crime itself.
• 'arav ("he will lie in wait", H0693) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), the first in a chain of five such forms that narrate successive actions following the initial imperfect.
• hikkahu ("he will strike him", H5221) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect; combined with nefesh ("life/soul", H5315H) as its object, the phrase expresses a strike aimed at the victim's life.
• nas ("he will flee", H5127) — qal sequential perfect, the final action in the chain, leading into 'el-'achat he'arim ha'el ("to one of these cities").

What the text says

The Hebrew builds the case through a single long conditional sentence. The imperfect yihyeh establishes the hypothetical frame ("if there will be a man..."), and the participle sone describes the man's underlying attitude toward his re'ehu ("his neighbor", H7453 + H9023). From there, the grammar shifts into a chain of sequential perfects — 'arav, qam, hikkahu, met, nas — each attached by the narrative ve (H9001). This construction, common in biblical Hebrew legal and narrative style, presents a sequence of consecutive events as a single unfolding scenario rather than as isolated statements: lying in wait, rising up, striking, dying, fleeing all follow logically and temporally from the initial condition.

The phrase hikkahu nefesh is notable: the hiphil verb hikkah takes nefesh as its object, literally "he struck him [as to] life/soul," an idiom that marks the blow as directed at the victim's life, distinguishing it from a non-fatal strike. The final verb met ("he will die", H4191) confirms the outcome, and nas introduces the fugitive's flight to ha'arim ha'el ("these cities", H5892B + H0411), referring back to the asylum cities established earlier in the chapter.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'ish ("man", H0376I) as ἄνθρωπος ῥῶπος, adding a qualifier not present in the Hebrew, which has simply "a man." The LXX also inserts ἐν σοὶ ("among you"), specifying a location not stated in the Hebrew clause. The Vulgate compresses 'arav ("lie in wait") and hikkahu nefesh ("strike his life") into "insidiatus fuerit vitæ ejus" ("shall have lain in wait for his life"), merging the ambush and the life-directed strike into one clause, whereas the Hebrew keeps them as separate sequential actions.