Exodus 21:11

Summary

The verse states a legal condition: if a man does not perform "these three things" for a woman, she is released from his authority without any payment of money. It forms the concluding clause of a set of regulations concerning a woman's status and provisions.

Key words

• 'im ("if", H0518A) — conditional particle opening the protasis (the "if" clause) of the legal case.
• shalash ("three", H7969) — cardinal number in construct form, pointing forward to 'elleh ("these") to specify "three of these [things]" previously listed.
• ya'aseh ("he will do", H6213A) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular; denotes an action not yet completed or habitually expected, here negated by lo ("not", H3808).
• yatze'ah ("she will go out", H3318G) — qal, marked as a sequential perfect continuing the narrative/legal sequence; the vav (H9001) attached to it links this clause as the direct consequence of the preceding negated condition.
• chinam ("without paying", H2600) — adverb modifying the verb of departure, reinforced by the following 'ein kasef ("no money", H0369 + H3701G), which restates the absence of payment using a construct-like negation structure.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional sentence: the protasis is introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A) followed by the numeral shalash ("three", H7969) in construct with the demonstrative 'elleh ("these", H0428), meaning "these three things" — referring back to items specified in the preceding verses. The negation lo ("not", H3808) plus the qal imperfect ya'aseh ("he will do", H6213A) expresses the failure to perform an expected action toward the woman, marked by the pronominal suffix -ah ("her", H9034) attached to the preposition la ("to/for the", H9005).

The apodosis begins with the narrative vav prefixed to yatze'ah ("she will go out", H3318G), a qal sequential perfect that grammatically continues the logical sequence begun by the conditional clause — in Biblical Hebrew this construction (vav + perfect following an imperfect condition) marks the resulting or consequent action. The departure is qualified twice: first by the adverb chinam ("without paying", H2600), and second by the phrase 'ein kasef ("no money", H0369 + H3701G), where 'ein functions in construct with kasef ("money", H3701G) to negate its presence. This double marking of "without payment" through two separate terms is a feature of the Hebrew that translations often compress into a single expression such as "free" or "without payment."

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the protasis with ta tria tauta ("these three things") using a neuter plural noun phrase without an explicit antecedent list visible in this verse alone, matching the Hebrew shalash 'elleh structurally. The Vulgate's tria ista ("these three things") is a close formal parallel to the Hebrew. All versions preserve the double negative-payment expression (chinam / 'ein kasef) as a single concept ("gratis", "sin dinero", "without monetary payment"), collapsing the Hebrew's two-part construction into one phrase.