Exodus 22:11

Summary

The verse establishes a legal procedure: an oath invoking Yehovah (H3068G) is to be sworn between two parties to settle whether one of them had appropriated the other's property. If the accused party swears he did not lay a hand on it, the owner must accept the oath and the accused is released from paying compensation.

Key words

• she.vu.'At ("[the] oath of", H7621) — feminine singular construct; it binds grammatically to Yehovah, producing "oath of Yehovah," marking the oath as sworn by invoking the divine name rather than a generic pledge.
• sha.Lach ("he had stretched out", H7971K) — qal perfect, a completed action; combined with yad ("hand", H3027G) it forms the idiom "to stretch out the hand," meaning to take or misappropriate something, here negated by lo' ("not", H3808).
• la.Kach ("he will accept [it]", H3947H) — qal sequential perfect (vav + perfect continuing the narrative sequence), indicating the owner's required response follows automatically once the oath is sworn.
• ye.sha.Lem ("he will make compensation", H7999A) — piel imperfect, an intensive stem denoting full or complete restitution; negated here, it removes the obligation to compensate.
• be.'a.La ("owner", H1167G) with pronominal suffix — masculine plural construct form referring to the single owner of the property, the one who must accept the oath.

What the text says

The sentence opens by naming the legal instrument, she.vu.'At Yehovah ("oath of Yehovah"), as the subject of the verb tih.Yeh ("it will be", H1961, qal imperfect), placing it "between the two of them" (bein she.nei.Hem, H0996G/H8147). The condition follows with 'im ("if", H0518A) introducing the content of what is sworn: lo' sha.Lach yad-o ("he did not stretch out his hand"), a completed-action (perfect) construction describing the alleged act of taking bi-mLe.khet re.'E.hu ("on the property of his neighbor", H4399/H7453).

After the conditional oath-content, the narrative vav (ve, H9001) attached to la.Kach shifts to the consequence: once the oath is given, the owner (be.'a.La) "will accept" it. The final clause, joined by the conjunction ve (H9002) and negated by lo', states that the party under oath "will not make compensation" (ye.sha.Lem), using the piel stem which in this verb typically denotes full restitution — its negation removes that obligation entirely.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the oath as ὅρκος... τοῦ θεοῦ ("oath of God"), using the generic theos where the Hebrew specifies Yehovah by name. The LXX also adds ἦ μὴν μὴ αὐτὸν πεπονηρεῦσθαι καθόλου ("that he has not acted wickedly at all"), a broader moral phrasing not matching the narrower Hebrew idiom "stretched out his hand." The Vulgate omits any divine name, stating simply jusjurandum erit ("there will be an oath"), where the Hebrew explicitly attaches the oath to Yehovah.