Exodus 21:28

Summary

Exodus 21:28 establishes the outcome when an ox gores a man or a woman to death: the ox is to be stoned, its meat is not to be eaten, and the owner of the ox bears no guilt. The verse is structured as a casuistic law, opening with a conditional clause followed by three sequential consequences.

Key words

• yiggach ("it will gore", H5055) — qal imperfect, marking the hypothetical/future goring action that triggers the case.
• saqol yissaqel ("certainly...it will be stoned to death", H5619) — infinitive absolute (saqol) combined with a niphal imperfect (yissaqel) of the same root; this doubling intensifies the verb, underscoring the certainty of the stoning.
• besaro ("its flesh", H1320 + H9023) — noun in construct form with a pronominal suffix, forming a possessive chain "flesh-of-it."
• ba'al ("owner of", H1167G) — masculine singular construct noun, linking directly to ha-shor ("the ox", H7794) to form "owner of the ox."
• naqi ("free from guilt", H5355A) — adjective functioning as the predicate of a verbless nominal clause, stating the owner's status without an explicit copula "to be."

What the text says

The verse opens with the conjunction ve-khi ("and if", H9002 + H3588A), introducing a conditional legal case. The subject shor ("an ox", H7794) performs the action yiggach ("it will gore", H5055), with 'ish ("a man", H0376G) and 'ishah ("a woman", H0802G) marked by the object particle 'et (H0853) as alternative victims, joined by 'o ("or", H0176A). The clause va-met ("and he will die", H4191) uses a sequential perfect form, a common construction in Hebrew narrative and legal chains, linking cause and result.

The consequence is expressed through the infinitive absolute plus finite verb construction saqol yissaqel, a grammatical pattern that in Biblical Hebrew emphasizes certainty or intensity of an action — here, that the stoning of the ox is not optional but mandated. The negated niphal lo ye'akhel ("it will not be eaten", H3808 + H0398) extends the prohibition to consumption of the meat, referred to via the construct-plus-suffix form besaro ("its flesh"). The final clause is verbless: ba'al ha-shor naqi ("the owner of the ox [is] free from guilt"), a nominal sentence type where Hebrew omits "to be," a structure that translations must supply overtly.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders va-met ("and he will die," singular) as "mortui fuerint" ("they will have died," plural), adjusting number to cover both potential victims (man and woman) in a single plural verb, whereas the Hebrew uses one singular verb after the disjunctive "or." The LXX text given renders the double object "a man or a woman" more compactly as "ἄνδρα ἢ αἰ ἀποθάνῃ" ("a man or... dies"), without a clearly rendered separate term for "woman" in the provided text, differing from the Hebrew's explicit parallel objects 'ish and 'ishah. The intensifying infinitive absolute saqol is reflected in BSB's "must surely be stoned" but not in RV1909's plain "será apedreado" ("will be stoned"), which does not mark the emphatic doubling present in the Hebrew grammar.