Deuteronomy 22:4

Summary

Deuteronomy 22:4 prohibits ignoring a fellow Israelite's donkey or ox that has fallen on the road, and instead commands actively helping him raise the animal back up. The verse combines a prohibition with a positive obligation of assistance.

Key words

• tir'eh ("you will see", H7200) — qal imperfect, here functioning as a prohibition when preceded by lo' ("not", H3808); it frames the whole scene as something the addressee must not merely witness and pass by.
• noflim ("falling", H5307) — qal participle, masculine plural, describing the animals as caught in the ongoing state of having collapsed, not a completed single event.
• hit'alamta ("you will hide yourself", H5956) — hithpael sequential perfect; the reflexive stem depicts an act of self-concealment, i.e., deliberately turning one's attention away.
• hakem taqim ("certainly...you will raise", H6965) — infinitive absolute followed by the hiphil imperfect of the same root; this doubling construction intensifies the obligation, marking it as certain and emphatic rather than optional.
• chamor achikha ("donkey of your countryman", H2543/H0251) — construct chain marking possession, identifying the animal's owner as a "countryman" (ach) rather than a stranger.

What the text says

The verse opens with lo' tir'eh, a negated imperfect that sets up a prohibition: the addressee is not to "see" — that is, to encounter and disregard — the fallen animal. The participle noflim extends this scene, portraying the donkey or ox as currently in a state of having fallen, observed in the moment. The following clause, ve-hit'alamta mehem, uses a vav-consecutive perfect attached to a hithpael form; in Biblical Hebrew this construction continues the force of the preceding negation, so that "you will not see... and hide yourself" reads as a single prohibited sequence: seeing the animal down and then withdrawing from it. The reflexive hithpael stem is significant grammatically, since it frames the concealment as something the subject actively performs on himself, not a passive failure to notice.

The final clause shifts from prohibition to positive command through the infinitive absolute hakem paired with the finite verb taqim, both from the root H6965 ("to raise"). This doubling is a common Hebrew device for emphasis, underscoring that the act of helping to lift the animal is not left to discretion.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew shor (H7794, "ox") is rendered in the LXX as moschon ("calf" or "young ox"), a narrower term than the Hebrew word. The LXX makes the prohibition against ignoring the animal explicit with mē huperidēs autous ("do not disregard them"), while in the Hebrew this second prohibition is carried only by the sequential perfect continuing the earlier lo', without a repeated negation. The Vulgate similarly states the prohibition explicitly with non despicies. The emphatic Hebrew doubling hakem taqim is mirrored in the LXX by the participle-plus-verb pair anistōn anastēseis, but the Vulgate collapses this into the single verb sublevabis, without reproducing the intensifying repetition found in the Hebrew.