Exodus 22:14

Summary

The verse describes a legal case: if a man borrows something from his fellow (re'ehu, H7453) and it is injured or dies while the owner is absent, the borrower must pay compensation. The Hebrew builds the case with a conditional clause followed by two possible outcomes and a final ruling using an emphatic verbal construction.

Key words

• yish'al ("he will ask/borrow", H7592) — qal imperfect, expressing the initiating action of the case ("if a man borrows").
• re'ehu ("his neighbor", H7453 + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, identifying the lender as "his fellow/neighbor."
• nishbar ("it will be broken/maimed", H7665) — niphal (passive) perfect, marking the first possible damage without naming an agent — the harm simply "happens" to the object.
• be'alav ("its owner", H1167G + H9023) — plural construct noun with singular-referent suffix; the plural form ba'alim is used here to denote a single owner, a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew for this noun.
• shallem yeshallem ("he shall surely make restitution", H7999A) — infinitive absolute followed by the piel imperfect of the same root, an emphatic doubling construction that intensifies the obligation to repay.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conjunction ve (H9002) plus the conditional particle khi (H3588A), marking a legal "if" clause typical of this section of Exodus. The subject ish ("anyone", H0376I) performs the action yish'al ("he will ask/borrow", H7592), taking something me'im re'ehu ("from with his neighbor", H5973B + H7453 + H9023) — a prepositional phrase built from two prepositions stacked together, common in Biblical Hebrew to express "from the possession of."

The narrative vav (H9001) on nishbar ("it will be maimed", H7665) links this passive verb to the sequence, followed by o met ("or it died", H0176A + H4191) in the qal perfect — a completed, simple state. Neither verb names who or what caused the damage; the niphal form of nishbar especially avoids specifying an agent.

The clause be'alav ein immo ("its owner, [was] not with it", H1167G/H9023 + H0369 + H5973A/H9033) states the absence condition using the negative existential particle ein (H0369), structured as a construct phrase. The verdict follows with the emphatic infinitive-plus-imperfect construction shallem yeshallem (H7999A), a grammatical intensifier that Biblical Hebrew uses to stress certainty or obligation — rendered in translations simply as "he must" or "shall surely" repay, though the doubling itself carries rhetorical weight not visible in a single English verb.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a third contingency, αἰχμάλωτον ("taken captive"), which has no counterpart among the two Hebrew verbs nishbar ("maimed", H7665) and met ("died", H4191). The Vulgate's quidquam horum ("any of these things") generalizes the borrowed object beyond what the Hebrew text specifies, since the Hebrew itself never names the borrowed item explicitly in this verse.