Exodus 21:27

Summary

This verse gives the case where a slave-owner knocks out the tooth of his male or female slave. The law states that the slave must be sent away free as compensation for the lost tooth. It continues the injury regulations begun in the preceding verse regarding physical harm to slaves.

Key words

• shen ("tooth of", H8127G) — feminine singular construct noun, repeated twice in construct chains (shen 'avdo, shen 'amato), meaning "tooth of his slave" and "tooth of his maidservant."
• yaphil ("he will knock out", H5307H) — hiphil (causative) imperfect of the root meaning "to fall," so the causative sense is "cause to fall/knock out," expressing a future or hypothetical action tied to the conditional 'im.
• lachophshi ("to the free [person]", H2670 + H9005) — preposition plus article attached to an adjective used substantively, "to the free (status)," marking the goal of the action that follows.
• yeshallechenu ("he will set free him", H7971H + H9033) — piel (intensive) imperfect verb with a third-person masculine singular pronominal suffix, "he shall send him away," the suffix referring back to the slave mentioned.
• tachat ("in place of", H8478J) — masculine singular construct noun functioning as a preposition, "instead of/in exchange for," introducing the compensation clause tachat shinno ("in place of his tooth").

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional sentence introduced by ve'im ("and if"), continuing the casuistic legal style seen in the surrounding verses. The protasis lists two possible objects for the verb yaphil: shen 'avdo ("the tooth of his male slave") or shen 'amato ("the tooth of his female slave"), joined by 'o ("or", H0176A). Both nouns are in construct form with a possessive suffix (-o, "his"), showing that the slaves belong to the subject performing the action, who is not explicitly named in this verse but is understood from the surrounding legal context.

The apodosis places the prepositional phrase lachophshi ("to the free") before the verb yeshallechenu, a piel imperfect carrying an intensive nuance of "sending away" or "releasing," with a singular object suffix "him." The final phrase tachat shinno ("in place of his tooth") specifies the compensation, using the same noun shen seen in the protasis, creating a lexical echo between injury and remedy.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the pronoun as plural, ἐξαποστελεῖ αὐτούς ("he will send them away"), and the Vulgate similarly uses dimittet eos ("he will dismiss them"), both treating the male and female slave together as a combined plural object. The Hebrew, however, uses a singular suffix (-ennu, "him") attached to yeshallechenu, reflecting the disjunctive structure ("this one or that one") rather than a joint plural referent.