Exodus 22:8

Summary

Exodus 22:8 addresses the case where a suspected thief cannot be identified: the owner of the house where the theft occurred must be brought before ha'elohim ("the judges", H0430G) to determine whether he himself misappropriated his neighbor's property. The verse is structured as two parallel conditional clauses, both introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A).

Key words

• yimmatze' ("he will be found", H4672) — niphal imperfect, passive voice: the thief's discovery (or non-discovery) is presented as something that happens to him, not an action he performs.
• nikrav ("he will be brought near", H7126G) — niphal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by yimmatze'; the passive form indicates the house-owner is subjected to a legal procedure rather than initiating it.
• ba'al ("master of", H1167G) — construct form linking to habbayit ("the house", H1004B), producing "master of the house," i.e., the householder.
• ha'elohim ("the judges", H0430G) — masculine plural noun with definite article; the same word elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible denotes "God," but here the plural form and legal context support a rendering as human judicial authorities.
• shalach yad ("he stretched out hand", H7971K + H3027G) — qal perfect verb plus construct noun with pronominal suffix (yado, "his hand"), an idiom for taking or misappropriating something.

What the text says

The verse consists of two mirrored conditional clauses, each opened by 'im lo' ("if not"). The first clause states that if the thief yimmatze' ("is found", H4672) — a niphal form placing the subject in a passive role — a legal action follows: the house-owner nikrav ("is brought near", H7126G), again niphal, to ha'elohim (H0430G). The double use of niphal verbs in sequence keeps the grammatical focus on the house-owner as the one acted upon by the judicial process, rather than as an active party bringing accusation.

The second clause repeats the conditional structure ('im lo') but shifts to a qal perfect verb, shalach ("stretched out", H7971K), describing what needs to be verified: whether the house-owner "stretched out his hand" on the property (melekhet, H4399, construct) of his neighbor (re'ehu, H7453, with third-person suffix). The construct chains ba'al-habbayit, yad-o, and melekhet re'ehu each link two nouns tightly, a common feature of Biblical Hebrew for expressing possession and relationship without additional prepositions.

Differences between versions

The LXX and the Vulgate both add an oath element absent in this Hebrew clause: the LXX states the owner ὀμεῖται ("will swear"), and the Vulgate similarly reads jurabit ("he will swear"). The Hebrew text of this verse contains no verb corresponding to swearing an oath.

Regarding ha'elohim (H0430G), the LXX renders it with the singular τοῦ θεοῦ ("of God"), while the Vulgate uses the plural deos ("gods"), and the modern translations given (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) render it as "judges" or "Dios," reflecting the ambiguity of the Hebrew plural form's referent in this legal context.