Deuteronomy 24:13

Summary

The verse instructs that a pledge (a garment taken as collateral) must be returned to its owner before sunset, so that he can sleep in it and bless the one who returned it. The text states that this act will be counted as tzedakah ("righteousness", H6666) before Yehovah.

Key words

• ha.Shev ("certainly ", H7725) — infinitive absolute of the same root as the following verb; it has no independent translation but grammatically reinforces the imperfect that follows, producing the emphatic sense rendered in English as "be sure to."
• ta.Shiv ("you will return", H7725) — hiphil imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular; the causative stem indicates that the subject actively causes the pledge to go back, not merely that it returns on its own.
• 'a.Vot ("pledge", H5667) — masculine singular noun with definite article, the object being returned; it names the specific item (a garment) held as security.
• sal.ma.T ("garment", H8008) — feminine singular noun in construct form with a pronominal suffix ("his garment"), specifying whose garment is meant.
• tzedakah ("righteousness", H6666) — feminine singular noun, the abstract quality attributed to the one who returns the pledge, syntactically the subject of the verb tihyeh ("it will belong", H1961).

What the text says

The sentence opens with a doubled verbal construction: the infinitive absolute ha.Shev followed by the finite hiphil imperfect ta.Shiv, both from the root shuv ("to return"). This doubling is a common Biblical Hebrew pattern used to intensify or make emphatic the command expressed by the finite verb — here rendered in English versions as "be sure to return" or "precisely...return." The object is marked by the particle 'et (H0853, untranslated) preceding ha.'avot, "the pledge," with the article indicating a previously mentioned, specific item.

The temporal clause ke.vo ha.shemesh ("when the sun goes/comes," using the qal infinitive of bo, H0935, with the definite noun shemesh, "sun," H8121) sets the deadline for the action. Two sequential perfects follow — sha.khav ("he will lie down," H7901) and ve.rakhekha ("he will bless you," H1288, piel stem) — continuing the narrative chain begun by the initial imperfect, describing consequences that follow once the pledge is returned: the man sleeps in his own garment and blesses the one who acted.

The final clause states u.lekha tihyeh tzedakah, "and to you it will be [as] righteousness" — the noun tzedakah is grammatically the subject of the verb tihyeh ("it will belong/be," qal imperfect, H1961), and the phrase is directed lifnei Yehovah 'Eloheikha, "before Yehovah your God," using the construct noun panim ("face," here "before," H6440) governing the divine name and the construct 'Elohei ("God of," H0430) with the possessive suffix "your."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the emphatic double verb as ἀποδόσει ἀποδώσεις, mirroring the Hebrew infinitive-plus-imperfect structure. The Vulgate instead uses a single verb, reddes ("you will return"), preceded by sed statim ("but immediately"), conveying urgency through an adverb rather than verbal repetition. Where the Hebrew tzedakah is a concrete noun ("righteousness"), the LXX uses ἐλεημοσύνη ("mercy, almsgiving"), and the Vulgate uses justitiam ("justice"), showing different lexical choices for the same underlying term.