Exodus 21:18

Summary

Exodus 21:18 describes a legal scenario: when men quarrel and one strikes another with a stone or a fist, causing the injured party not to die but to become bedridden. This verse sets up a case-law condition that will be resolved with the consequences in the following verse.

Key words

• yerivun ("they will quarrel", H7378) — qal imperfect with paragogic nun, an emphatic verbal ending marking ongoing or intense mutual action between the parties.
• hikkah ("he will strike", H5221) — hiphil sequential perfect, a causative form indicating that the subject causes the blow to occur; the narrative vav links it directly to the preceding condition.
• re'ehu ("his neighbor", H7453) — masculine singular noun in construct form with the suffix hu ("his"), meaning "his fellow/neighbor," identifying the victim as one bound to the striker within the same community.
• yamut ("he will die", H4191) — qal imperfect negated by lo' ("not", H3808), stating the specific condition that death does not result.
• nafal... le-mishkav ("he will fall... to a bed", H5307G / H4904) — qal sequential perfect followed by a prepositional phrase with le- ("to"), describing the resulting state of being confined to bed rather than a single momentary fall.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conditional particle khi ("if", H3588A), governing the entire protasis of a case-law formula common in this section of Exodus. The subject of the quarrel is anashim ("men", H0582), plural, establishing that the dispute involves two or more parties before the narrative narrows to a single striker, ish ("anyone", H0376I), acting against re'ehu ("his neighbor", H7453). The direct object marker 'et (H0853) explicitly marks the neighbor as the recipient of the action, though it remains untranslated in English.

The sequence of verbs — yerivun (imperfect), then hikkah (sequential perfect), then yamut (imperfect, negated), then nafal (sequential perfect) — follows a typical Biblical Hebrew narrative chain where an initial imperfect sets the scene and subsequent perfects with narrative vav carry the action forward in sequence. The instruments of the strike, 'even ("a stone", H0068G) and 'egrof ("a fist", H0106), are joined by 'o ("or", H0176A), presenting them as alternative means rather than combined ones. The final clause, nafal le-mishkav ("he will fall to a bed"), uses the preposition le- (H9005) to indicate a resulting condition rather than a physical location, describing an extended state of confinement rather than a single collapse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders anashim ("men", H0582) as δύο ἄνδρες ("two men"), specifying a number not explicit in the Hebrew plural. The Vulgate's viri ("men") matches the Hebrew plural without adding a numeral. Where the Hebrew nafal le-mishkav describes falling "to a bed" (a resulting state), the LXX uses κατακλιθῇ ἐπὶ τὴν κοίτην ("he is laid up upon the bed"), and the Vulgate has jacuerit in lectulo ("he shall have lain in the little bed"), both expressing the same resulting confinement but with slightly different verbal images (falling vs. lying down).