Deuteronomy 22:2

Summary

The verse gives the second half of a case law: if the "brother" (fellow Israelite) to whom a stray animal belongs is not nearby, or is not known to the finder, the finder must take the item home, keep it there until the owner comes looking for it, and then return it.

Key words

• qarov ("near", H7138) — masculine singular adjective, describing the spatial/social condition that triggers the alternate procedure.
• 'achikha ("your countryman/brother", H0251I) — construct noun with 2ms suffix, appearing twice (once in the condition, once in the "until he seeks" clause), identifying the owner as a fellow Israelite.
• yeda'to ("you knew him", H3045) — qal perfect with 3ms object suffix, marking the second condition (lack of personal recognition) joined to the first by ve-lo'.
• 'asafto ("and you shall gather it", H0622) — qal sequential perfect, the first of three chained verbs forming the legal consequence (apodosis).
• derosh ("seeking", H1875) — qal infinitive following 'ad ("until", H5704), forming a temporal clause that sets the endpoint for holding the item.
• hashevoto ("and you shall return it", H7725H) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, the final verb in the chain, describing the causative act of "causing to return" = restoring the item.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional sentence (protasis–apodosis). The protasis has two negated conditions joined by ve-lo': lo' qarov 'achikha 'eleikha ("your countryman is not near to you") and lo' yeda'to ("you do not know him"). Both use simple negation (lo', H3808) rather than a single compound clause, showing that either lack of proximity or lack of recognition independently triggers the rule.

The apodosis is a chain of three sequential perfect verbs (va-'asafto, ve-hayah, va-hashevoto), a common syntactic pattern in legal instruction where each verb continues the narrative logic of the previous one: gather → let it remain → return. The middle verb hayah ("it will be") together with 'immekha ("with you") expresses duration, bounded by the temporal clause 'ad derosh 'achikha 'oto ("until your countryman seeks it"), where the infinitive derosh has no expressed subject marker itself — the subject "your countryman" is supplied by the following noun phrase. Throughout, the animal itself is never named in this verse; it is referred to only through the 3ms pronominal suffixes attached to yeda'to, 'asafto, derosh...'oto, and hashevoto, with the referent (the stray animal) established by the preceding verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the infinitive clause 'ad derosh 'achikha 'oto with a subjunctive, heōs an zētēsē auta ho adelphos sou ("until your brother seeks them"), making explicit a subject and using a plural object pronoun (auta) not distinguished in the Hebrew suffix. The Vulgate similarly supplies an explicit subject, quamdiu quaerat ea frater tuus, and additionally shifts asafto ("you shall gather it") into a plural verb erunt ("they shall be"), consistent with its plural ea. Modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) all supply the noun "animal" for the pronominal suffixes, a specification not present in the Hebrew wording of this verse itself.