What Does Exodus 21:12 Mean?
He who strikes a man so that he dies is surely put to death.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats the root for death: the life taken and the sentence imposed are bound in one line.
THE MEANING
A person who strikes someone and causes their death faces death as the consequence named here. The repeated death-root joins the life taken to the judgment imposed. The verse speaks now about a community’s grave accounting for a life lost through violence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a fatal blow can be separated from its result: the death remains joined to the striker’s accountability.
THE ROOT
וָמֵת
va-met
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
To die; death.
“die / surely put to death” in this verse is va-met. The clause says the struck man dies, then uses the same root in מוֹת יוּמָת (mot yumat), “he shall surely be put to death.” Hebrew repeats the death-root on both sides of the act, linking the life taken with the sentence imposed.
ALSO GROWS
mēt: Dead; one who has died.
מֵת
The victim’s death is named with this root before the sentence follows.
māvet: Death.
מָוֶת
This noun carries the same root into the consequence that the verse declares.
yûmat: He shall be put to death.
יוּמַת
This passive form names the sentence, completing the verse’s repeated death-root.
מַכֵּה
makkēh
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
To strike, smite, or wound.
“strikes” in this verse is makkēh. The word names the striker through the act of striking. Its root also forms words for a blow and for someone struck, keeping the action and its injury within one family of words.
ALSO GROWS
makkāh: A blow, wound, or plague.
מַכָּה
The noun makes the injury carried by the striking root visible.
mukkēh: Struck or afflicted.
מֻכֶּה
This form describes the one who bears the impact of the action.
THE PATTERN
A life taken through violence remains bound to an answerable consequence.
Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.And if he strikes him with an implement of iron, so that he dies, he is a crusher; the crusher shall surely be put to death.Then Jesus said to him, Turn your sword back to its place, for all who take up the sword will perish by the sword.THE THREAD
And if a man does not lie in wait, but God lets him come into his hand, then I set for you a place to which he flees.The next line sets a boundary around the death sentence: when a man has not lain in wait, a place of refuge is appointed. It shows the surrounding passage accounting for intent and circumstance alongside the death itself.
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