Exodus 21:12

Summary

Exodus 21:12 establishes a legal case: someone who strikes another person, causing death, is subject to the death penalty. The Hebrew constructs this through a participial phrase followed by a sequential verb, closing with an emphatic doubled verbal form.

Key words

• makeh ("[one who] will strike", H5221) — hiphil participle in construct form, meaning "striker of," setting up a legal category ("the one who strikes X").
• ish ("anyone", H0376I) — noun completing the construct chain begun by makeh, naming the object struck.
• met ("he will die", H4191) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative/legal sequence begun by the participle; "and he dies" as a result.
• mot ("certainly", H4191) — infinitive absolute of the same root as yumat, used for emphasis rather than as a separate action.
• yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191) — hophal imperfect, passive causative: "he will be caused to die," i.e., executed.

What the text says

The verse opens with a construct chain: makeh ("striker of") + ish ("a man") functions as a legal subject-phrase, roughly "the striker of a man" or "one who strikes a man." This is not a finite verb but a participle, which in Hebrew legal style often introduces case law ("in the case of one who..."). The narrative vav on va-met links this participial subject to a following action, "and he dies," using the sequential perfect to mark the resulting outcome within the case.

The final clause, mot yumat, repeats the root H4191 ("to die") twice: first as an infinitive absolute (mot), then as a finite hophal imperfect (yumat). This doubling is a common Hebrew intensifying construction — the infinitive absolute does not add a separate action but emphasizes the certainty or completeness of the verb that follows. The hophal stem itself is passive-causative, meaning the subject is caused to die, i.e., executed by an external agent (implicitly, the legal community), rather than dying spontaneously.

Structurally, the sentence has no explicit conditional marker ("if") in the Hebrew; the case is framed through the participle and its outcome, which functions conditionally within legal-code style even though grammatically it is nominal rather than a subordinate clause.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sentence as an explicit conditional clause, Ἐὰν δὲ πατάξῃ τίς τινα ("but if someone strikes someone"), using ἐάν ("if") and a subjunctive verb, where the Hebrew uses a participle without an overt conditional particle. The Vulgate adds volens occidere ("willing/intending to kill"), introducing an explicit notion of intent that is not present in the Hebrew wording of makeh ish va-met ("one who strikes a man and he dies"), which does not specify the striker's intention. Modern translations (BSB, SBLIBRE) also render the construction as an explicit conditional ("whoever strikes...", "el que golpee..."), smoothing the participial Hebrew structure into a subordinate clause form.