Deuteronomy 22:23

Summary

The verse opens a legal case: it describes a situation in which a young woman who is a virgin and already betrothed to a man is found by another man in a city, and that man lies with her. It is the protasis (conditional setup) of a law, not yet stating the consequence.

Key words

• na'ar ("a young woman", H5291) — feminine singular noun identifying the female subject of the case.
• betulah ("a virgin", H1330) — feminine singular noun specifying her sexual status prior to the event.
• me'orasah ("betrothed", H0781) — pual (passive intensive) participle, feminine singular, indicating she has been formally engaged to a man by someone else's action; the passive form shows the betrothal was done to her, not by her.
• matza ("he will find", H4672) — qal verb in sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by ki yihyeh ("if he will be"); marks the second event in the legal sequence.
• shakhav ("he will lie", H7901I) — qal verb in sequential perfect, the final action in the conditional chain, paired with the preposition 'im ("with", H5973A) plus the pronominal suffix "her" (H9034).

What the text says

The sentence is built as a conditional chain typical of legal casuistic formulation in the Hebrew text. It begins with the particle ki ("if", H3588A) followed by yihyeh ("he will be", H1961), an imperfect verb that sets up the hypothetical scenario: "if there will be a young woman..." The subject is described by two stacked nouns, na'arah ("a young woman", H5291) and betulah ("a virgin", H1330), followed by the passive participle me'orasah ("betrothed", H0781) with the preposition le ("to", H9005) plus 'ish ("a man", H0376G), establishing her prior legal bond to a specific man.

The narrative then shifts to sequential perfect verbs joined by the vav conjunction (H9001): u-metza'ah ("and he will find her", H4672 + H9034) and ve-shakhav ("and he will lie", H7901I). These sequential perfects continue the conditional action begun by the initial imperfect, a common feature of Hebrew legal prose where an initial imperfect sets the condition and following perfects with vav describe the unfolding events within that condition. The second 'ish ("a man", H0376G) is a different referent from the first — the text distinguishes the betrothed man from the man who "finds her in the city," using the same noun for both without additional qualifiers to differentiate them lexically; the distinction rests entirely on their role in the sentence structure.

Differences between versions

The Greek Septuagint renders na'arah betulah ("young woman, virgin") as παῖς παρθένος ("child, virgin"), using παῖς where the Hebrew has a term specifically meaning "young woman" (H5291). The Vulgate uses puellam virginem ("girl, virgin"), similarly rendering H5291 with a general term for "girl" rather than a more specific age/status term. Modern versions such as BSB and SBLIBRE render me'orasah ("betrothed", H0781) with phrases like "pledged in marriage" or "comprometida para casarse," making explicit the marital implication that the Hebrew participle expresses more compactly through its passive verbal form.