Deuteronomy 25:12

Summary

This verse gives the closing instruction of a legal case (Deuteronomy 25:11–12): the hand of a woman who has intervened in a specific manner is to be cut off, and the one carrying out the punishment is told not to show pity. The sentence is composed of two short clauses joined by a narrative sequence.

Key words

• ka.tzo.Tah ("you will cut off", H7112) — qal sequential perfect, second person masculine singular; continues the narrative sequence begun earlier in the passage, indicating an action that follows logically/temporally from what precedes.
• ka.Pa ("hand", H3709G) — feminine singular noun in construct form, "hand of...", followed by the pronominal suffix.
• h ("her", H9024) — pronominal suffix attached to ka.Pa, specifying whose hand is meant.
• ta.Chos ("it will look with pity", H2347) — qal imperfect, third person feminine singular; the imperfect aspect marks an action framed as ongoing or prospective, here negated.
• 'ei.Ne. ("eye", H5869A) — feminine singular noun in construct form, "eye of...", the grammatical subject of ta.Chos.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on ka.tzo.Tah ("and you will cut off"), a sequential perfect that ties this clause to the preceding legal scenario, marking it as the resulting action in the sequence of the case. The direct object marker 'et- introduces ka.Pa ("hand"), a construct noun that takes the third-person feminine suffix h ("her"), producing "her hand" as the object to be cut off. The verb is second-person masculine singular, addressing the one who executes the judgment.

The second clause, lo' ta.Chos 'ei.Ne.kha ("your eye will not look with pity"), uses the imperfect verb ta.Chos with the negation lo', producing a durative or habitual prohibition rather than a simple past-tense statement. Its grammatical subject is 'ei.Ne. ("eye"), in construct with the second-person masculine suffix kha ("your"), yielding "your eye." The construction places the "eye" — rather than the person directly — as the one that does or does not show pity, a common idiom in this corpus for expressing personal attitude or disposition through a body part as grammatical subject.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew names the body part explicitly as ka.Pa ("hand", construct with "her"), and the LXX renders it with the Greek term for "hand" (χεῖρα) without an explicit possessive pronoun matching "her," relying on the earlier antecedent. The Vulgate’s manum illius ("her hand") matches the Hebrew's explicit possessive sense. For the second clause, the Hebrew idiom "your eye will not look with pity" is preserved literally by the LXX (ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου, "your eye") and by the Spanish RV1909/SBLIBRE renderings ("tu ojo"), while the Vulgate shifts to a different grammatical subject, nec flecteris ... ulla misericordia ("nor shall you be moved by any mercy"), placing the addressee rather than "the eye" as the subject of the verb.