Exodus 21:15

Summary

Exodus 21:15 states a legal consequence: the participle makeh ("one who strikes", H5221) identifies the offender, who strikes his father or mother, and the sentence is enforced through a doubled verbal construction from the root "to die" (H4191), producing the sense "he shall surely be put to death."

Key words

• makeh ("striking/the one who strikes", H5221) — Hiphil participle, construct form; names the agent by his action ("the striker of...") rather than using a finite verb, framing the entire clause as a legal category ("one who strikes X").
• 'avi ("father of", H0001G) — masculine singular construct, bound to the following pronominal suffix "his," forming "his father."
• 'immo ("his mother", H0517) — feminine singular construct, likewise bound to the possessive suffix, paired with 'avi by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002).
• mot ("to die", H4191) — Qal infinitive absolute; placed before the finite verb to intensify or confirm the action described by the following verb.
• yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191) — Hophal (causative-passive) imperfect, same root as mot; the passive causative form indicates that death is inflicted upon the subject by an external agent, not self-caused.

What the text says

The clause opens with the participle makeh in construct state, syntactically linking directly to 'avi ("father of") and, via the conjunction ve, to 'immo ("his mother"). This construct chain functions as the grammatical subject of the sentence: "the one who strikes his father and his mother." The predicate then follows as a distinct grammatical unit: the infinitive absolute mot paired with the finite Hophal imperfect yumat, both from the same triliteral root מות ("to die"). This infinitive-absolute-plus-finite-verb pattern is a common Biblical Hebrew construction that intensifies or underscores the certainty of the verbal action — here rendered in many translations as "shall surely be put to death." The Hophal stem of yumat marks the verb as causative-passive: the subject does not die by his own action but is caused to die by an external agency, consistent with a judicial or communal execution rather than a natural death.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text joins "father" and "mother" with the conjunction ve ("and", H9002), producing "his father and his mother." The LXX (Ὃς τύπτει πατέρα αὐτοῦ ἢ μητέρα αὐτοῦ) and the Vulgate (patrem suum aut matrem) both render the connector as "or" (ἢ / aut) rather than "and." Additionally, the LXX introduces the subject with a relative pronoun construction ("Ὃς τύπτει," "who strikes") rather than mirroring the Hebrew's participial-construct phrase directly.