Deuteronomy 21:7

Summary

Deuteronomy 21:7 records the declaration made by the elders in the ritual for an unsolved killing. They state, using their hands and eyes as representative parts of the body, that they neither shed the blood of the victim nor witnessed the killing.

Key words

• 'a.Nu ("they will answer", H6030B) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun with the vav; marks the formal verbal response of the elders.
• 'a.me.Ru ("they will say", H0559) — qal sequential perfect, paired with the previous verb to introduce the direct speech that follows.
• ya.Dei.nu ("our hands", H3027G + H9025) — dual construct noun with pronominal suffix; the dual form marks the natural pair (two hands), and the construct links it to the following suffix "our."
• sha.fe.khah ("they shed", H8210H) — qal perfect, a completed action negated by lo' ("not", H3808), denying past involvement in bloodshed.
• 'ei.Nei.nu ("our eyes", H5869A + H9025) — dual construct noun with suffix, structurally parallel to ya.Dei.nu, forming the second half of the declaration.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002): "our hands did not shed this blood" and "our eyes did not see [it]." Both clauses share the same grammatical pattern — a dual noun in construct with the first-person plural suffix "our" (ya.Dei.nu, 'ei.Nei.nu), followed by the negation lo' and a qal perfect verb (sha.fe.khah, ra.'U). This parallelism creates a balanced, formulaic denial: the hands (agents of action) did not perform the deed, and the eyes (organs of perception) did not witness it.

The opening verbs 'a.Nu ("they will answer") and 'a.me.Ru ("they will say") are both sequential perfects continuing the narrative flow set up by the preceding vav, indicating that this declaration follows a prior ritual action in the passage. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before ha.Dam ("the blood", H1818) marks "this blood" (ha.Dam ha.Zeh) as the specific object of the verb sha.fe.khah, with the demonstrative Zeh ("this", H2088) pointing to the particular bloodshed under discussion in the surrounding narrative.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders ya.Dei.nu ("our hands") with the plural article and noun Αἱ Χεῖρες ἡμῶν ("the hands of us"), matching the Hebrew dual sense with a Greek plural, since Greek lacks a dual for this construction. The Vulgate similarly uses manus nostrae ("our hands," plural) and oculi ("eyes," plural) for the Hebrew duals ya.Dei.nu and 'ei.Nei.nu. No substantive divergence in meaning appears among the Hebrew, LXX, and Vulgate in this verse; the differences are limited to how each language grammatically represents the Hebrew dual number.