Deuteronomy 24:12

Summary

The verse addresses a conditional case: if the person from whom a pledge was taken is poor, the one holding the pledge must not sleep while still keeping that pledge overnight. It sets a limit on retaining collateral taken from someone in need.

Key words

• 'im ("if", H0518A) — subordinating particle introducing the conditional clause that governs the rest of the verse.
• 'ish ("[is] a person", H0376G) — masculine singular noun functioning as the subject of the nominal clause "he is a poor man."
• 'aNi ("poor", H6041) — masculine singular adjective describing the subject; together with hu' ("he", H1931) it forms a full nominal (verbless) sentence: "a poor man he [is]."
• tishKav ("you will lie down", H7901H) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular; the imperfect form marks ongoing or future action, here negated to express a prohibition ("you shall not lie down").
• 'avoTo ("his pledge", H5667 + H9023) — masculine singular noun in construct form with the third-person possessive suffix "his," specifying whose pledge is meant; preceded by the preposition ba ("in", H9003), giving "in his pledge," i.e., in possession of it while lying down.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve'im ("and if"), marking a new conditional case within the surrounding legal instructions. The condition itself, 'ish 'aNi hu' ("a poor man he [is]"), is a verbless (nominal) clause: no verb "to be" appears in the Hebrew, the identity is expressed simply by placing the noun, adjective, and pronoun together. This construction states a fact/status rather than describing an action.

The apodosis, lo' tishKav ba'avoTo ("you will not lie down in his pledge"), uses the negated qal imperfect tishKav. The imperfect aspect can denote future or habitual/ongoing action; negated by lo', it functions here as a prohibition addressed to a second-person singular "you." The phrase ba'avoTo — preposition ba plus the construct noun 'avot ("pledge") with the third-person suffix -o ("his") — literally means "in his pledge," describing the state of retaining the pledge overnight rather than a separate act of sleeping. The syntax thus binds the physical possession of the collateral to the temporal condition of nightfall.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew nominal clause with a verb, ἐὰν... πένηται ("if he is poor" / "should be poor"), supplying an explicit verb of being where the Hebrew has none. The Vulgate's non pernoctabit apud te pignus shifts the grammatical subject: instead of "you shall not lie down in his pledge," the pledge itself is made the subject that "will not spend the night" with the addressee, differing from the Hebrew's second-person verb tishKav.