Deuteronomy 22:19

Summary

Deuteronomy 22:19 prescribes the penalty for a man who has falsely accused his bride of not being a virgin: he must pay a fine of one hundred pieces of silver to the young woman's father, and he is permanently barred from divorcing her for the rest of his life.

Key words

• 'a.ne.Shu ("they will fine", H6064) — qal sequential perfect, third person plural; continues the narrative chain of legal consequences begun earlier in the passage.
• ho.Tzi' ("he has sent forth", H3318) — hiphil perfect, causative stem; describes the man's completed act of "putting out" a bad report, the causative sense marking that he actively produced or spread this reputation.
• be.tu.Lat ("[the] virgin of", H1330) — feminine singular construct; grammatically links to Yis.ra.'El ("Israel", H3478), forming the phrase "a virgin of Israel."
• yu.Khal ("he will be able", H3201) — qal imperfect, expressing future/ongoing capacity; here negated to state a permanent incapacity.
• sha.le.Cha ("send away", H7971) — piel infinitive, intensive stem; the infinitive form paired with le ("to") expresses the purpose/action he is forbidden from doing — divorcing her.

What the text says

The verse opens with two sequential perfect verbs, 'a.ne.Shu ("they will fine", H6064) and na.te.Nu ("they will give", H5414), both third person plural, continuing a chain of actions that began earlier in the legal passage. This grammatical continuity signals that the fine and its payment to 'a.Vi ("[the] father of", H0001) the na.'a.Rah ("young woman", H5291) are two parts of a single judicial procedure rather than separate events.

The clause introduced by ki ("for", H3588) gives the grounds for the penalty: ho.Tzi' ("he has sent forth", H3318), a hiphil perfect describing a completed causative act — the man "brought out" or "caused to go out" a shem ra' ("bad name", H8034 + H7451), a reputation, against a be.tu.Lat Yis.ra.'El ("virgin of Israel", H1330 + H3478), where the construct chain ties the woman's status directly to the collective identity "Israel."

The final clause uses yu.Khal ("he will be able", H3201), a qal imperfect negated by lo' ("not", H3808), paired with the piel infinitive sha.le.Cha ("send away", H7971) plus the suffix -hah ("her"). The piel stem of shalach here carries the intensive/technical sense of formal divorce or dismissal, and the imperfect form with negation expresses a standing incapacity rather than a single refusal — a state that holds kol yamav ("all his days", H3605 + H3117), literally "all of his days."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew me'ah kesef ("a hundred silver", H3967 + H3701) is rendered by the LXX as ἑκατὸν σίκλους ("a hundred shekels"), specifying a unit ("shekels") not explicit in this Hebrew phrase, and the Vulgate similarly reads centum siclis argenti ("a hundred shekels of silver"). The Hebrew shem ra' ("bad name", H8034 + H7451) appears in the LXX as ὄνομα πονηρόν ("evil name") and in the Vulgate as nomen pessimum ("a most wicked name"), a superlative intensifying the Hebrew's simple adjective ra' ("bad").