Exodus 21:26

Summary

This verse states a legal case: if a man strikes the eye of his male slave or female slave and destroys it, he must send that slave away free in compensation for the eye. The sentence follows the casuistic legal formula common in this section of Exodus, opening with a conditional clause and following with the required consequence.

Key words

• yakeh ("he will strike", H5221) — hiphil (causative) imperfect: the subject causes a blow to occur, marking the triggering action of the case.
• 'ein ("[the] eye of", H5869A) — feminine singular construct, appearing twice (for the male slave's eye and the female slave's eye), grammatically binding the noun to the following possessor.
• shichata ("he will destroy", H7843) — piel (intensive) sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the vav; the intensive stem marks a decisive, effective ruin of the eye, not a mere wound.
• yeshallechennu ("he will set free", H7971H) — piel imperfect with 3ms suffix "him": the intensive stem here carries a causative-declarative sense, "he will send him away," with the object suffix specifying the slave as the one released.
• tachat 'eino ("in place of his eye", H8478J + H5869A) — construct chain meaning "in the place/in exchange for his eye," expressing compensation rather than mere sequence.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional (ve-khi, "and if") followed by two verbs in sequence describing the act: yakeh ("he will strike") governs two parallel direct objects marked by 'et, "the eye of his male slave" ('ein 'avdo) and "the eye of his female slave" ('ein 'amato), joined by 'o ("or"). The construct chains 'ein 'avdo and 'ein 'amato attach the body part directly to its possessor without an intervening preposition, a standard construct-genitive pattern in Biblical Hebrew.

The clause then shifts to ve-shichatah, a sequential (waw-consecutive) perfect verb meaning "and he will destroy it" (the feminine suffix -ah referring back to "eye," a feminine noun). This piel form intensifies the action beyond a simple strike to actual destruction of the organ. The apodosis follows: lachofshi yeshallechennu, "to freedom he will send him," using the piel imperfect yeshallechennu with a pronominal suffix "him," referring to the slave. The final phrase tachat 'eino, "in place of his eye," using the construct noun tachat ("in place of, in exchange for"), specifies that the release functions as compensation tied specifically to the loss of the eye, not as a general manumission.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds ἐκτυφλώσῃ ("he blinds"), making explicit the result of destroying the eye, and renders the outcome with plural ἐλευθέρους ... αὐτούς ("them free"), differing from the Hebrew singular suffix on yeshallechennu ("him"), which grammatically refers to one slave at a time despite the "or" construction covering both cases. The Vulgate's luscos eos fecerit ("shall have made them one-eyed") similarly uses a plural construction and specifies blindness in one eye, an interpretive gloss not present as a separate verb in the Hebrew, where shichatah ("he will destroy it") stands alone without a distinct verb for blinding.