Leviticus 22:28

Summary

Leviticus 22:28 prohibits slaughtering an ox or a sheep together with its young on the same day. The verse addresses a plural audience ("you all") and uses two marked direct objects to specify both the parent animal and its offspring as objects of the prohibited action.

Key words

• shor ("an ox", H7794) — masculine singular noun, the first of two animal types named as subject of the prohibition.
• seh ("a sheep", H7716) — common gender singular noun, paired with shor by the conjunction 'ov ("or", H0176A) to cover both categories of livestock.
• beno ("its young", H1121H + H9023) — construct noun with a 3rd person masculine singular suffix ("his/its"), marked by the object marker 'et (H0853), referring back to the animal named in the clause.
• tishchatu ("you must cut the throat of", H7819A) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, the finite verb governing both objects; the plural form addresses a group rather than an individual.
• yom 'echad ("one day", H3117G + H0259) — noun plus cardinal number, marking the temporal restriction within which the prohibited pairing of actions applies.

What the text says

The Hebrew clause places both objects — 'oto ("it", referring to the ox or sheep) and 'et-beno ("its young") — before the negated verb lo' tishchatu. Each object is introduced by the untranslated marker 'et (H0853), a grammatical device that flags the noun as a direct object without adding lexical meaning. The verb tishchatu is plural, indicating the command is directed at multiple addressees, even though the objects (animal and its young) are each grammatically singular. The suffix -o ("its/his") attached to 'oto and to beno creates a chain of reference: the pronoun and the construct noun both point back to the animal category named at the start (shor or seh), rather than introducing a new referent.

The temporal phrase be-yom 'echad ("in one day") closes the sentence, restricting the scope of the prohibition to a single day rather than banning the killing of parent and offspring altogether at different times.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the pronoun and offspring term with feminine and plural forms — αὐτήν ("her") and τὰ παιδία αὐτῆς ("her children," plural) — where the Hebrew has a masculine singular suffix -o and a singular beno ("its young"). The Vulgate similarly casts the subject as feminine ("illa bos, sive ovis") and uses a passive plural verb, non immolabuntur ("they shall not be slaughtered"), where the Hebrew verb tishchatu is active and addressed to a plural human subject ("you shall not slaughter").