Exodus 23:4

Summary

Exodus 23:4 presents a conditional legal instruction: if someone encounters the ox or donkey of their enemy wandering off, they are obligated to return it to its owner. The verse uses an emphatic verbal construction to stress the certainty of this obligation.

Key words

• tif.Ga' ("you will meet", H6293) — qal imperfect, second person masculine, expresses a future or potential encounter, setting up the conditional scenario introduced by ki ("if", H3588A).
• 'o.yiv.kha ("your enemy", H0341 + H9021) — qal participle in construct with a pronominal suffix; the participle form functions as a substantive ("the one who is hostile"), here specifying the owner of the animal as someone in an adversarial relationship to the addressee.
• to.'Eh ("wandering off", H8582) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the ongoing state of the animal — it is currently astray, not merely lost once.
• ha.Shev ("certainly ", H7725H) — hiphil absolute infinitive, paired with the following finite verb to intensify or emphasize the action of returning.
• te.shi.Ve.nu ("you will return it", H7725G) — hiphil imperfect, second person masculine, with third person suffix "it"; the hiphil (causative) stem indicates causing the animal to go back, i.e., actively bringing it back.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the conditional particle ki ("if", H3588A), followed by the verb tif.Ga' ("you will meet", H6293), establishing the scenario of an unplanned encounter. The object of this encounter is shor 'oyivkha ("the ox of your enemy", H7794 + H0341 + H9021) or chamoro ("his donkey", H2543 + H9023), joined by 'o ("or", H0176A). Both animals are described as to.'Eh ("wandering off", H8582), a participle indicating a present, ongoing condition of straying.

The core instruction is built on the paired construction ha.Shev te.shi.Ve.nu ("certainly you will return it") — an infinitive absolute (H7725H) followed by the finite imperfect verb of the same root (H7725G). This doubling of the root shuv ("to return") in the hiphil stem is a grammatical feature that intensifies the verbal action, marking the obligation as emphatic rather than optional. The suffix -nu ("it", H9033) refers back to the animal, and the final phrase lo ("to him", H9005 + H9033) specifies the beneficiary — the enemy who owns the animal.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the animals as plural participles (πλανωμένοις, "wandering," dative plural agreeing with both ox and donkey), while the Hebrew uses a singular participle to.'Eh that could be read as applying distributively to either animal in the "or" construction. The Vulgate's reduc ad eum ("bring back to him") uses a single imperative verb, not preserving the infinitive absolute + imperfect emphatic doubling found in the Hebrew ha.Shev te.shi.Ve.nu. Modern translations like BSB ("you must return it") and SBLIBRE ("asegúrate de devolvérselo," "make sure to return it") attempt to convey this emphasis through modal phrasing rather than verbal repetition.