Exodus 21:17

Summary

The verse establishes that a person who curses his father or his mother is to be put to death. The Hebrew construction uses an intensifying infinitive absolute paired with the finite verb to underscore the certainty of the penalty.

Key words

• mekallel ("[one who] will curse", H7043) — piel participle, masculine singular, denoting someone actively engaged in cursing (piel often marks intensive or effective action) rather than a one-time incidental act.
• 'aviv ("his father", H0001G) — construct noun with pronominal suffix -v ("his", H9023), grammatically bound to the participle as its object.
• 'immo ("his mother", H0517) — construct noun with suffix -o ("his", H9023), joined to 'aviv by the conjunction ve- ("and", H9002), forming a single compound object "his father and his mother."
• mot ("certainly [to die]", H4191) — qal infinitive absolute, placed before the finite verb to intensify the verbal idea of dying.
• yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191) — hophal imperfect, same root as mot, but here causative-passive, indicating the subject undergoes the action of being killed rather than performing it.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a conjunction u- ("and", H9002) linking this case law to the preceding one, followed immediately by the subject: mekallel ("[one who] will curse", H7043), a participle that functions as a noun phrase — "the one who curses." This participle governs two construct objects joined by ve- ("and", H9002): 'aviv ("his father", H0001G) and 'immo ("his mother", H0517), each carrying a third-person masculine possessive suffix -v/-o ("his", H9023). Together they form the compound direct object of the cursing.

The predicate is built on the root H4191 ("to die") appearing twice: first as the infinitive absolute mot ("certainly [to die]"), then as the finite hophal imperfect yumat ("he will be put to death"). This doubling is a common Biblical Hebrew syntactic device where the infinitive absolute precedes and reinforces the finite verb of the same root, expressing certainty or emphasis on the outcome. The hophal stem itself is causative-passive, meaning the grammatical subject (the one who cursed) is not the agent of dying but the one caused to die by another party's action, though the text does not specify who carries out the act.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text (מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת, "certainly...he will be put to death") and the Vulgate (morte moriatur, "let him die by death") both preserve the intensifying doubled-root construction. The LXX text supplied here (Ὃς ἐὰν κλέψῃ τίς τινα τῶν υἱῶν Ἰσραὴλ..., concerning kidnapping) does not correspond in content to the Hebrew of this verse, which addresses cursing parents; this reflects a difference in verse correspondence between the Hebrew numbering and the Greek text as presented in the data.