Exodus 21:35

Summary

Exodus 21:35 states the legal case where one man's ox gores another man's ox and it dies: the two owners must sell the surviving ox and divide its price, and they must also divide the dead animal between them. The verse is a casuistic law, introduced by "if," followed by consequences expressed as a chain of actions.

Key words

• yiggof ("it will strike", H5062) — qal imperfect, sets up the conditional scenario ("if it gores/strikes") that triggers the rest of the case.
• shor ("ox", H7794) — appears twice in construct form ("ox of"), first for the goring animal (shor-ish, "ox of a man") and then for the victim (shor re'ehu, "ox of his neighbor"), marking possession without naming individuals.
• va-met ("and it died", H4191) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the imperfect yiggof; this verb form links cause (the goring) to consequence (death).
• machru ("they will sell", H4376) — qal sequential perfect, plural, shifting focus from the animals to the unnamed owners who must act.
• yechetzun ("they will divide", H2673) — qal imperfect with paragogic nun (H9013), the final verb of the verse; the added nun is a grammatical feature marking emphasis or closure at the end of the clause.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conjunction ve ("and") plus the conditional particle khi ("if", H3588A), a standard formula for introducing a new legal case in this section of Exodus. The subject of the goring is shor-ish ("ox of a man/anyone"), built as a construct chain rather than a full clause — the Hebrew simply juxtaposes "ox" and "man" without a verb "to belong to." The object, shor re'ehu ("ox of his neighbor"), uses the same construct pattern with a pronominal suffix -hu ("his") attached to re'a ("neighbor", H7453).

After the initial imperfect verb yiggof, the narrative shifts into a chain of sequential perfects (va-met, u-machru, ve-chatzu) — a common Biblical Hebrew pattern where an initial imperfect sets the scenario and subsequent perfects (with prefixed vav) narrate the resulting sequence of events as if consequences following automatically. The subjects of these verbs are unstated but implied as "the two owners" (plural verbs machru, chatzu). The final verb, yechetzun ("they will divide"), breaks this pattern by returning to imperfect form and adding a paragogic nun, a grammatical feature that in Biblical Hebrew often marks the end of a unit or adds rhetorical weight, here closing the case. The word ha-met ("the dead [one]", H4191) is a substantivized participle — literally "the one that has died" — referring to the ox carcass without repeating the noun shor.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yiggof ("it will strike") with κερατίσῃ ("gore with the horn"), a more specific term than the Hebrew verb, which does not specify the instrument of striking. The LXX text also shows an unusual doubling, "τίς τινος ταῦρος ταῦρον" ("someone's bull, a bull"), where the Hebrew has a single construct phrase shor-ish. The Vulgate adds alienus ("belonging to another") to describe the goring ox, a specification not present in the Hebrew shor-ish ("ox of a man/anyone"). Where the Hebrew participle ha-met simply means "the dead one," the Vulgate expands this to cadaver... mortui ("corpse of the dead one"), and the LXX similarly specifies "τὸν ταῦρον τὸν τεθνηκότα" ("the dead bull"), both making explicit what the Hebrew leaves as a bare substantized participle.