Exodus 22:19

Summary

Exodus 22:19 establishes a legal ruling stated as an absolute case: anyone who lies sexually with an animal is subject to death. The Hebrew sentence structure marks this as a categorical legal formula, using a construction that emphasizes certainty of the penalty rather than mere possibility.

Key words

• kol ("any", H3605) — the construct form introduces a universal legal category; it means "anyone who" or "every one who," setting up an unrestricted class of offender.
• sho.khev ("[one who] lies", H7901I) — a qal participle functioning as a substantive ("the one lying/lying-one"); participles in legal Hebrew describe the offender by his ongoing or characteristic action rather than a single completed event.
• behemah ("an animal", H929) — feminine singular noun, the object of the prohibited act, introduced by the preposition 'im ("with", H5973A).
• mot ("certainly to die", H4191) — infinitive absolute of the same root as the finite verb that follows; in Biblical Hebrew this doubling construction (infinitive absolute + finite verb of the same root) intensifies or confirms the verbal action, often rendered in translation as "surely" or "certainly."
• yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191) — hophal (causative-passive) imperfect: the subject undergoes the action of being caused to die, i.e., someone else causes his death; the imperfect aspect can carry a modal/legal force ("shall be put to death") typical of case-law formulations.

What the text says

The verse opens with kol ("any", H3605) followed directly by the participle sho.khev ("[one who] lies", H7901I), forming the standard casuistic legal subject: "anyone-lying." This participle + preposition + noun sequence (sho.khev ... 'im ... behemah) identifies the class of person addressed by the law without narrating a specific incident — it is a generalized description of conduct.

The predicate consists of the pairing mot yumat — infinitive absolute mot ("certainly to die", H4191) followed by the hophal imperfect yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191), both from the same root H4191. This repetition, common in Hebrew legal and narrative style, reinforces the certainty of the stated consequence; the infinitive absolute has no subject or tense of its own but strengthens the finite verb that follows. The hophal form itself signals that the death is caused by an external agent (implicitly the community or its judicial process), not self-inflicted, distinguishing this from a qal or niphal formulation.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the singular Hebrew verb form as a plural imperative-like construction, θανάτῳ ἀποκτενεῖτε αὐτούς ("you shall kill them by death"), shifting from the passive/impersonal Hebrew yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191) to an active second-person plural addressed to the community, and pluralizing the object (autous, "them") where the Hebrew has a singular participial subject. The Vulgate, morte moriatur ("let him die by death"), preserves the singular subject and mirrors the Hebrew's doubled-root intensification more closely than the LXX, using a subjunctive passive construction.