Exodus 22:23

Summary

The verse states a conditional: if someone afflicts a vulnerable person (referenced with singular masculine suffixes) and that person cries out, the speaker (grammatically first-person, "I") affirms that the cry will certainly be heard. The Hebrew doubles both the affliction verb and the hearing verb using the infinitive absolute construction, producing emphatic intensification.

Key words

• 'anah ("to afflict", H6031B) — appears twice: once as infinitive absolute ('aNeh) and once as imperfect (te'aNeh), the doubling marking emphatic certainty ("you will surely afflict").
• tza'aq ("to cry out", H6817) — same doubled pattern (tza'Ok... yitz'Ak), an infinitive absolute followed by an imperfect, emphasizing the certainty/intensity of the outcry.
• shama' ("to hear", H8085G) — doubled as shaMo'a... 'eshMa', infinitive absolute plus first-person imperfect, emphasizing that hearing will certainly occur.
• tza'aqato ("his cry of distress", H6818) — feminine singular noun in construct with a third-person masculine singular suffix, tying the "cry" back grammatically to the singular antecedent established earlier by oto ("him", H0853+H9033).
• 'im (H0518A / H0518B) — the conditional particle appears twice, structuring the verse as a nested conditional: "if X, then when Y, surely Z."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on a chain of conditional clauses using 'im ("if") combined with the infinitive absolute + imperfect pattern three times in a row (for "afflict," "cry out," and "hear"). This grammatical doubling is a common Biblical Hebrew device to intensify the certainty or force of an action — it does not add new information lexically, but signals to a Hebrew reader that the action described is emphatic, not merely possible. The syntax moves through the sequence: an emphatic conditional affliction, followed by an emphatic conditional outcry ("if he indeed cries out to me"), followed by an emphatic assurance of response ("I will surely hear"). Throughout, the pronominal suffixes (-o on oto, -i on elai, -o on tza'aqato) maintain a consistent singular masculine referent, tying the object of affliction, the one crying, and the possessor of the cry together as the same singular individual.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew consistently uses singular suffixes (oto "him," tza'aqato "his cry"), referring to one afflicted person. The LXX renders these as plural — αὐτοὺς ("them"), αὐτῶν ("their voice") — and the Vulgate likewise uses eos ("them") and eorum ("their"), shifting the referent from a singular individual in the Hebrew to a plural group in the Greek and Latin. The English (BSB) and Spanish (RV1909, SBLIBRE) versions follow the Hebrew singular ("him," "he") in RV1909, while BSB and SBLIBRE follow the LXX/Vulgate plural pattern ("them," "they").