Exodus 21:32

Summary

This verse establishes a fixed compensation when an ox gores a male or female slave: the owner of the ox must pay thirty shekels of silver to the slave's master, and the ox itself is to be killed by stoning. The verse mirrors the syntax of the preceding laws about oxen that gore free persons, but sets a specific price rather than case-by-case judgment.

Key words

• yigach ("it will gore", H5055) — qal imperfect, third person masculine, indicating a future/hypothetical action; the ox is the grammatical subject.
• 'eved ("a male slave", H5650) and 'amah ("a female slave", H0519) — both nouns appear as direct objects of the goring, joined by 'o ("or", H0176A), covering either sex of slave.
• shloshim shekalim ("thirty shekels", H7970 + H8255) — cardinal number followed by the noun in plural, forming the fixed sum of silver.
• la-adonav ("to his master", H0113 + H9023) — the noun 'adon appears here in masculine plural construct form with a third-person singular suffix. This plural-for-singular pattern is a known feature of Hebrew when referring to a single figure of authority.
• yissakel ("it will be stoned to death", H5619) — niphal imperfect, marking the passive fate of the ox, contrasting with the active yiten ("he will give", H5414N) describing the owner's action.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conditional particle 'im ("if", H0518A) governing the clause "'eved yigach ha-shor" — literally "a slave, it will gore, the ox" — where the object ('eved) is fronted before the verb and its subject (ha-shor, "the ox"). This word order emphasizes the person affected before naming the agent, a common pattern in Hebrew casuistic (case) law. The clause is extended with 'o 'amah ("or a female slave"), showing both female and male slaves fall under the same provision without separate treatment in the ruling that follows.

The consequence clause splits into two independent actions. First, kesef shloshim shekalim yiten la-adonav states that the owner of the ox must give thirty shekels of silver "to his master" — using the grammatically plural noun 'adonav for a single master, a form also seen elsewhere in the text for figures of authority. Second, ve-ha-shor yissakel uses the niphal (passive) form of the verb, stating simply that "the ox will be stoned," without naming who carries out the stoning — the grammar leaves the executing agent unspecified.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'eved and 'amah as παῖδα ("child/servant") and παιδίσκην ("young female servant") rather than terms directly parallel to "male/female slave," and gives the sum as δίδραχμα ("didrachms") instead of transliterating "shekels." The Vulgate compresses the two nouns into "servum ancillamque" joined by "and" rather than preserving the Hebrew's "or" ('o), slightly changing the logical structure of the condition. The Hebrew's plural construct 'adonav ("his masters," functionally "his master") is rendered as a singular "domino" (Vulgate) and "τῷ κυρίῳ" (LXX), following normal translation of this Hebrew idiom into singular forms in Latin and Greek.