Deuteronomy 22:16

Summary

The verse reports the father of the young woman addressing the elders in direct speech: he states that he gave his daughter in marriage to a certain man, and that the man has come to hate her. The verse sets up the father's formal testimony before the town elders.

Key words

• 'a.Mar ("he will say", H0559) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain from the previous verse; introduces the father's direct speech.
• na.'ar ("young woman", H5291) — feminine singular noun with definite article (ha., H9009), identifying the girl at the center of the case.
• ze.ke.Nim ("elders", H2205G) — masculine plural adjective functioning as a noun, the body of men to whom the father speaks.
• na.Ta.ti ("I gave", H5414O) — qal perfect, first person, marking a completed act; the object bi.T ("daughter", H1323G) is fronted with the object marker 'et (H0853), placing emphasis on what was given before the verb itself is heard.
• yis.na.'E. ("he hated", H8130) — qal narrative form attached to the vav (H9001), shifting the report from the completed act of giving to a subsequent, ongoing attitude of hatred.

What the text says

The sentence opens with a vav-consecutive verb, 'a.Mar ("he will say", H0559), which in this narrative sequence functions as a past/reported action: "and he said." The subject is given in a construct chain, 'a.Vi ha.na.'ar ("father of the young woman", H0001G + H5291), followed by the audience, ha.zze.ke.Nim ("the elders", H2205G), marked with the preposition 'el ("to", H0413).

The father's speech itself begins with the direct object 'et-bi.Ti ("my daughter", H1323G with 1st person suffix H9020) placed before the verb na.Ta.ti ("I gave", H5414O). This fronting of the object before the finite verb is a feature of the Hebrew clause structure: the daughter is announced as the topic of the statement before the action performed on her is stated. The phrase la.'Ish ha.Zeh ("to this man", H0376G + H2088) uses the demonstrative Zeh ("this", H2088) to specify a particular man already identified in context, and le.'i.Shah ("for a wife", H0802H) states the purpose of the giving. The clause ends with a second vav-narrative verb, yis.na.'E. ("he hated", H8130), attached to the pronominal suffix Ha ("her", H9034), shifting from the completed act of marriage to the man's subsequent hatred.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ze.ke.Nim ("elders", H2205G) as γερουσίᾳ, a council-body term, corresponding closely to the Hebrew sense of an assembly of elders. Where the Hebrew uses a finite narrative verb yis.na.'E. ("he hated", H8130) to report the man's hatred, the LXX uses a participle, μισήσας ("having hated"), subordinating the action grammatically rather than presenting it as a parallel narrative clause. The Vulgate similarly recasts this final clause as a relative-causal construction, "quam quia odit" ("whom, because he hates"), rather than a coordinated narrative statement as in the Hebrew.