Exodus 22:31

Summary

The verse instructs the addressees to be anshei-qodesh ("people of holiness", H0582/H6944G) for the speaker, prohibits eating meat classified as terefah ("a torn animal", H2966) found in the field, and directs that such meat be thrown to the dog.

Key words

• anshei-qodesh (H0582 + H6944G) — a construct chain literally "men of holiness"; the construct state links the two nouns so that "holiness" qualifies "men" as a defining characteristic rather than a separate description.
• tihyun (H1961) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, carrying the paragogic nun (H9013), a suffix that adds emphasis to the verb "you will be."
• terefah (H2966) — feminine singular noun denoting an animal torn or mauled, here functioning as the category of meat under prohibition.
• to'khelu (H0398) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), forming the prohibition "you must not eat."
• tashlikhun (H7993) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, also bearing the paragogic nun (H9013), meaning "you will cause to throw / you will throw."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence divides into three clauses. The first, ve-anshei-qodesh tihyun li ("and men of holiness you will be to me"), uses the construct noun phrase anshei-qodesh as the predicate of the verb tihyun, with the prepositional phrase li ("to me", built from H9005 + H9030) marking the relational orientation of the statement — the identity described belongs to or is directed toward the speaker. Both finite verbs in the verse, tihyun and tashlikhun, carry the paragogic nun, a grammatical feature that in Biblical Hebrew imperfect forms adds emphatic weight to the 2nd person plural instruction, though this nuance of emphasis is not distinctly rendered in translation.

The second clause, u-vasar ba-sadeh terefah lo' to'khelu, prohibits consumption of terefah — meat from an animal torn or mauled — specifying the location ba-sadeh ("in the field", H7704G) where such a carcass would be found. The third clause, la-kelev tashlikhu(n) oto, directs the disposal of that meat "to the dog" (la-kelev, H3611), with oto (H0853 + H9033) as the direct object marker plus suffix referring back to the meat.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders terefah as θηριάλωτον ("caught by a wild beast"), specifying the cause of the tearing, where the Hebrew term terefah itself denotes the state of the animal (torn) without naming the agent. The Vulgate similarly interprets this as a bestiis fuerit praegustata ("tasted beforehand by beasts"), an explanatory expansion not present as such in the Hebrew wording. The Hebrew anshei-qodesh ("men of holiness") is rendered in the LXX as ἄνδρες ἅγιοι ("holy men") and in the BSB as "My holy people," shifting the construct-noun structure into an adjectival one.