Exodus 21:6

Summary

The verse describes a legal-ritual procedure: a master brings his slave before ha-Elohim ("the God/judges"), then to a doorpost, where the master pierces the slave's ear with an awl, establishing permanent service. Three actions are chained by sequential perfect verb forms, marking a continuous narrative sequence.

Key words

• hi.gi.sh ("he will bring near", H5066H) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: appears twice (words 2 and 10), meaning the master causes the slave to approach; the causative stem shows the master as agent acting upon the slave, not the slave approaching on his own.
• 'a.do.nav ("his master", H0113) — masculine plural construct with singular suffix "his"; the plural form for a single master is a fixed grammatical pattern (compare 'Elohim below), appearing identically in words 4 and 21.
• ha-'Elohim ("the God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun with definite article; the plural morphology with singular referent parallels 'adonav, and the term functions here as the destination of the bringing-near action.
• ra.tza' ("he will pierce", H7527) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the same chain of actions begun by hi.gi.sh; simple (non-causative) stem, the master performs the piercing directly.
• le.'o.lam ("for ever", H5769G) — preposition + noun marking duration; sets the temporal scope of the resulting service established by 'a.va.d ("he will serve", H5647G).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of four sequential perfect verbs (hi.gi.sh, hi.gi.sh repeated, ra.tza', 'a.va.d), each introduced by the narrative ve- (H9001). This verbal chain presents four consecutive events as a single continuous legal procedure rather than isolated clauses: bringing near to ha-'Elohim, bringing near to the door or doorpost, piercing the ear, and the resulting permanent service. The double use of hi.gi.sh — first toward ha-'Elohim, then toward ha-delet ("the door", H1817C) or ha-mezuzah ("the doorpost", H4201) — separates two distinct locations or stages of the action rather than a single movement. The plural form 'adonav, repeated at the start of both the hi.gi.sh clause and the ra.tza' clause, grammatically frames the master as the consistent subject performing each step, even though the referent is one person.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew ha-'Elohim (with definite article, H0430G) is rendered by the LXX as τὸ κριτήριον τοῦ θεοῦ ("the judgment-place of God"), introducing a legal-institutional sense absent from the Hebrew noun itself, and adding the temporal word "then" (τότε) between the two hi.gi.sh actions, which has no counterpart in the Hebrew's narrative ve- chain. The Vulgate renders the same word as "diis" (plural, "to the gods"), matching the plural morphology of 'Elohim more literally than the LXX's singular "God." Modern translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) render ha-'Elohim as "los jueces"/"the judges"/"Dios," showing varied interpretive choices for this term not resolved by the Hebrew grammar alone.