Deuteronomy 21:19
וְתָפְשׂוּ בוֹ אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ וְהוֹצִיאוּ אֹתוֹ אֶל־זִקְנֵי עִירוֹ וְאֶל־שַׁעַר מְקֹמֽוֹ׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וְתָ֥פְשׂוּ ב֖וֹ אָבִ֣יו וְאִמּ֑וֹ וְהוֹצִ֧יאוּ אֹת֛וֹ אֶל־זִקְנֵ֥י עִיר֖וֹ וְאֶל־שַׁ֥עַר מְקֹמֽוֹ׃
κα συλλαβόντες αὐτὸν ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐξάξουσιν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν γερουσίαν τῆς πόλεως αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐπ’ τὴν πύλην τοῦ τόπου,
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
apprehendent eum, et ducent ad seniores civitatis illius, et ad portam judicii,
entonces su padre y su madre lo agarrarán y lo llevarán a los ancianos de su ciudad y a la puerta de su lugar.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Entonces tomarlo han su padre y su madre, y lo sacarán á los ancianos de su ciudad, y á la puerta del lugar suyo;
his father and mother are to lay hold of him and bring him to the elders of his city, to the gate of his hometown,
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse describes the next step in the procedure against a rebellious son introduced earlier in the passage: his father and mother physically seize him and bring him out to the elders of his town, specifically to the gate of his locality, where legal proceedings for such cases were held.
Key words
- Tafesu ("they will seize", H8610) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun in the previous verse; grammatically plural, its subject is specified by the two nouns that follow (father, mother).
- 'Aviv ("father of him", H0001G) — masculine singular construct with pronominal suffix, forming part of the compound subject "his father and his mother."
- ve'Immo ("and his mother", H0517) — feminine singular construct with suffix, joined to the previous noun by the conjunction ve (H9002), completing the subject pair.
- hoTzi'u ("they will bring out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: the causative stem marks that the parents actively cause the son to go out, not merely accompany him.
- zikNei ("elders of", H2205G) — masculine plural construct, linking to 'ir ("city") to specify which elders are meant — those of his own town.
What the text says
The sentence is built as two sequential clauses joined by the narrative ve (H9001), both using the sequential perfect form that continues a chain of actions already established in the surrounding verses: first Tafesu ("they will seize"), then hoTzi'u ("they will bring out"). Although both verbs are morphologically plural, no separate plural subject noun appears before them; the subject — "his father and his mother" — is stated only after the first verb, in construct-plus-suffix form ('Aviv, ve'Immo), a common Hebrew word order where the verb precedes its compound subject.
The destination is expressed through two parallel prepositional phrases marked by 'el ("to", H0413): "to the elders of his city" (zikNei 'ir-o) and "to the gate of his place" (sha'ar meqom-o). Both phrases use construct chains ending in the third-person suffix -o ("his"), tying the location firmly to the son's own community — his elders, his city, his place. The gate functioned as the site of public legal proceedings, so the phrase locates the action administratively rather than merely geographically.
Differences between versions
The Vulgate renders the final phrase as "ad portam judicii" ("to the gate of judgment"), replacing the Hebrew's meqom-o ("his place", H4725) with a term meaning "judgment," where the Hebrew text specifies only "his place," without an explicit reference to judgment. The LXX gives "τὴν πύλην τοῦ τόπου" ("the gate of the place"), preserving "place" but omitting the possessive suffix "his" found in the Hebrew meqom-o.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.