Exodus 23:5

Summary

Exodus 23:5 presents a conditional case: if someone encounters the donkey belonging to a person who hates them, lying down under its load, that person must not ignore the situation but must act with the owner to release the animal. The verse contains an internal repetition of the same root (עזב) used with two different nuances, which the word-by-word data captures but single-word translations flatten.

Key words

• chamor ("donkey of", H2543) — masculine singular construct, opening a chain that binds the animal to its owner: "donkey of [your hater]."
• sona'akha ("hater of you", H8130+H9031) — qal participle in construct with a 2ms suffix; describes the owner not by name but by an ongoing hostile relationship ("the one hating you").
• rovets ("lying down", H7257) — qal participle, masculine singular, absolute; presents the donkey's state as a durative fact observed by the passerby, not a completed single event.
• chadalta ("you will refrain", H2308) — sequential perfect continuing the narrative chain begun by ki ("if"); marks the expected/required response after the initial "seeing."
• azov ta'azov ("certainly...you will let loose", H5800C twice) — infinitive absolute followed by the same verb in imperfect; this doubling is the standard Hebrew emphatic construction, intensifying the imperfect verb.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a legal-style conditional: ki ("if") introduces the protasis with tir'eh ("you will see"), governing an object clause — chamor sona'akha rovets tachat massa'o ("the donkey of your hater lying under its load"). The construct chain chamor sona'akha fuses animal and owner into a single grammatical unit, while the participle rovets freezes the scene as an observed state rather than a narrated event.

The apodosis has two movements built on the same root, עזב (H5800): first ve-chadalta me-'azov lo ("and you will cease from leaving/abandoning it"), using the infinitive construct of עזב in the sense of "to abandon"; then azov ta'azov immo ("you will surely let loose with him"), using the infinitive absolute plus imperfect of the same root, here functioning in the sense of "releasing/freeing the load." The data's glosses ("leaving" vs. "let loose") reflect this shift in the root's semantic range within the same verse — the surface repetition of עזב carries opposite functional values (holding back from abandonment vs. actively releasing the load), a wordplay that a smooth translation cannot preserve. The final immo ("with him," H5973A + H9033) specifies that the release is a joint action performed together with the donkey's owner, not a substitute action performed alone.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the second occurrence of עזב with a different verb, synareis ("you shall lift up together"), and the first clause as ou pareleusē ("you shall not pass by"), losing the Hebrew's root repetition. The Vulgate similarly uses two distinct verbs, pertransibis ("you will pass through") and sublevabis ("you will lift up"), also not reflecting the single Hebrew root עזב used twice with different senses.