Exodus 19:13

Summary

Exodus 19:13 establishes that anyone or anything touching the boundary of the mountain (referenced from the preceding verse) must be killed by stoning or shooting, without physical contact from a hand — whether the offender is an animal or a human. Only when the ram's horn sounds may the people approach the mountain.

Key words

• ti.Ga' ("it will touch", H5060) — qal imperfect, third feminine singular, agreeing with yad ("hand"); the imperfect expresses a prohibited future/potential action.
• sa.Kol yi.sa.Kel ("certainly he will be stoned", H5619) — infinitive absolute + niphal imperfect construction; the doubling of the root intensifies the verb, and the niphal marks the passive voice ("he will be stoned," not "someone will stone him").
• ya.Roh yi.ya.Reh ("certainly he will be shot", H3384A) — same infinitive absolute + niphal imperfect pattern as the previous verb, offering a parallel alternative method of execution.
• bi.m.shoKh ("when... sounds", H4900 with preposition H9003) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition bi, forming a temporal clause ("when the drawing out/sounding occurs").
• ha.yo.Vel ("the ram's horn", H3104) — definite noun, masculine singular, referring to the horn instrument whose sound marks the moment when the prohibition changes.

What the text says

The verse opens with a negated verb, lo'-ti.Ga' ("it will not touch"), where the subject is yad ("hand", H3027G) — literally "a hand will not touch him." This phrasing places the emphasis on the absence of direct physical contact by a human hand, distinguishing it from the following methods of execution, which do not involve touching: stoning and shooting. Both execution methods use the same grammatical construction — infinitive absolute followed by a niphal (passive) imperfect of the same root — a pattern that in Biblical Hebrew intensifies certainty or emphasis ("he will surely be stoned," "he will surely be shot"). The niphal voice removes any explicit human agent from the sentence; the text does not say who stones or shoots.

The double conditional im-behemah im-'ish ("whether an animal, whether a human") uses the particle 'im (H0518A) twice to present two parallel possibilities under the same rule, followed by lo' yich.Yeh ("it will not live"), a simple negated qal imperfect.

The final clause shifts to a temporal structure introduced by bi.m.shoKh ha.yo.Vel ("when the ram's horn sounds/is drawn out"), using an infinitive construct with the preposition bi. The verb root m.shoKh (H4900) carries a sense of "drawing out" or "prolonging," here applied to the horn's blast. After this temporal marker, the pronoun Hemah ("they") introduces the new permitted action: ya.'a.Lu ("they will go up"), a qal imperfect describing the people ascending the mountain.

Differences between versions

The LXX expands the final clause considerably: where the Hebrew mentions only ha.yo.Vel ("the ram's horn"), the LXX lists "the voices and the trumpets and the cloud" (αἱ φωναὶ καὶ αἱ σάλπιγγες καὶ ἡ νεφέλη) departing from the mountain before ascent is permitted — elements not present in the Hebrew word-by-word data given. The Vulgate renders the sounding instrument as buccina ("horn/trumpet"), aligning more closely with the Hebrew yo.Vel than the LXX's threefold expansion.