Exodus 21:16

Summary

The verse establishes a legal case: someone who abducts a person ('ish, H0376I, "anyone/a man") and sells him, and is subsequently found holding him, is subject to a mandatory death penalty. The Hebrew builds this as a chain of three sequential actions—stealing, selling, being found—followed by an emphatic verdict.

Key words

• go.Nev ("[one who] will steal", H1589) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the agent as "the one who steals/kidnaps" (a person, not property).
• me.kha.R ("he will sell", H4376) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the participle; the added suffix -o ("him", H9033) marks the stolen person as direct object.
• nim.Tza' ("he will be found", H4672) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect: the subject is discovered rather than discovering, shifting the grammatical voice from active perpetrator to passive detection.
• ya.D ("hand", H3027H) — construct singular noun with pronominal suffix -o ("his"), forming be-yado ("in his hand/possession"), the idiom marking physical custody.
• Mot yu.Mat ("certainly to die... he will be put to death", H4191 twice) — infinitive absolute + hophal imperfect: the doubling intensifies the verdict, and the hophal form marks the death as causatively inflicted rather than self-caused.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is structured as a legal protasis-apodosis: three verbs in sequence (go.Nev, participle; me.kha.R, perfect; nim.Tza', niphal perfect) describe the conditions—stealing a person, selling him, and being caught with him in hand—before the apodosis delivers the penalty. The participle go.Nev functions almost as a case heading ("one who steals..."), typical of Hebrew legal style, while the vav-consecutive perfects (me.kha.R, nim.Tza') narrate the unfolding sequence of events rather than listing static conditions.

The idiom be-yado ("in his hand", combining ya.D and suffix -o) expresses physical possession or custody, a common Biblical Hebrew way of indicating that someone holds another person or object under their control. The final clause doubles the root H4191 (Mot yu.Mat): first as an infinitive absolute for emphasis, then as a hophal imperfect verb, a common Hebrew construction that intensifies the certainty of the stated outcome — "he will surely be put to death."

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (Qui furatus fuerit hominem, et vendiderit eum... morte moriatur) closely follows the Hebrew structure, preserving the sequence of stealing, selling, and the doubled death formula. The LXX text supplied here (Ὁ κακολογῶν πατέρα αὐτοῦ...) concerns someone who "reviles his father or mother," a different legal case than the Hebrew content of theft/sale of a person — this LXX text does not correspond to the same subject matter as the Hebrew verse provided.