Deuteronomy 22:15

Summary

The verse describes the procedure following an accusation against a bride: the father and mother of the young woman are to take the physical evidence of her virginity and bring it before the elders of the city at the gate.

Key words

• la.Kach ("he will take", H3947G) — qal sequential perfect, third masculine singular; grammatically the subject is "father," though a second subject ("mother") is added afterward, producing a singular verb governing a compound subject.
• na.'ar ("young woman", H5291) — feminine singular noun, definite by the article ha (H9009); repeated twice, once as the object of the father's/mother's relation and once as possessor of the be.tu.Lei.
• be.tu.Lei ("virginities of", H1331) — masculine plural construct noun; the plural form denotes physical tokens/evidence rather than an abstract single "virginity."
• ho.Tzi.'u ("they will bring forth", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, third plural; shifts to plural agreement, matching both parents as joint subjects of this action.
• zik.Nei ("elders of", H2205G) — masculine plural construct adjective functioning as a substantive, forming a construct chain with ha.'Ir ("the city", H5892B).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of two sequential-perfect verbs joined by the narrative ve (H9001): first la.Kach ("he will take"), with 'a.Vi ("father of", H0001G) as its explicit subject in construct with ha.na.'ar ("the young woman"), followed by ve.'i.Mah ("and her mother," H0517 + H9024). Although the subject "father and mother" is compound, the first verb la.Kach is grammatically singular, agreeing with the nearer subject "father," while the second verb ho.Tzi.'u shifts to plural, agreeing with the combined subject. This alternation—singular verb followed by plural verb for the same compound subject—is a feature of Hebrew syntax not reproduced in translations, which normalize the verbs to a single plural form ("the father and mother shall bring").

The object of the second verb is marked by the direct object particle 'et (H0853, untranslated) followed by be.tu.Lei ha.na.'ar ("the virginities of the young woman"), a construct phrase using the plural noun be.tu.Lei (H1331). The plural form suggests concrete tokens or signs rather than a single abstract quality. The destination of the action is expressed through 'el- zik.Nei ha.'Ir ("to the elders of the city") followed by ha.Sha.'e.rah ("the gate," H8179G) with the directional he suffix (H9011), indicating motion "toward" the gate rather than static location "at" the gate.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders be.tu.Lei ("virginities of," plural, H1331) as τὰ παρθένια ("the tokens of virginity," also plural), matching the Hebrew's plural sense. The Vulgate makes this explicit with "signa virginitatis" ("signs of virginity"), interpreting the plural noun as physical proof-objects. Both the LXX and Vulgate, along with modern translations (BSB, SBLIBRE, RV1909), smooth the Hebrew's singular-then-plural verb alternation (la.Kach / ho.Tzi.'u) into a single plural subject-verb construction ("the father and mother shall bring"), not preserving the grammatical shift visible in the Hebrew sequence.