What Does Exodus 21:21 Mean?
Only if he stands a day or two, he is not avenged, for he is his silver.
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
Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.THE KEY
The master is not punished because the enslaved person survives and is still counted as the master’s money.
THE MEANING
The verse sets a brutal threshold: if the beaten enslaved person lives on for a day or two, the master is not punished, because the person is reckoned as his money. The injury remains real; ownership is the stated reason the master escapes punishment here.
THE ROOT
יֻקַּם
yūqqam
GROWS FROM
נקם
n-q-m
To avenge, exact retribution.
The Hebrew word carries the sense of being avenged, making the verse’s threshold a question of whether the master faces retaliation. The reason given for withholding it is not that the beating is harmless, but that the enslaved person is counted as property.
ALSO GROWS
nāqām: Vengeance; retribution.
נָקָם
This noun shares the root and makes the force behind “punished” explicit.
nōqēm: Avenger; one who exacts vengeance.
נֹקֵם
This form shows the root can name the one who carries out the retaliation withheld in this verse.
יַעֲמֹד
yaʿămōḏ
GROWS FROM
עמד
ʿ-m-d
To stand, remain, or endure.
The Hebrew says the enslaved person “stands” for a day or two. Survival is the condition that determines whether the master is punished, so the verse measures the legal consequence by how long the injured person remains alive.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāmaḏ: To stand; remain.
עָמַד
This is the basic verb behind the verse’s survival threshold.
heʿĕmîḏ: To make stand; set upright.
הֶעֱמִיד
This causative form extends the root’s image of standing, while the verse uses it to mark whether the injured person continues to stand.
כַּסְפּוֹ
kaspo
GROWS FROM
כסף
k-s-p
Silver; money.
The root names silver and, by extension, money. The verse directly calls the enslaved person the master’s money, exposing ownership as the stated basis for the exemption.
ALSO GROWS
kesef: Silver; money.
כֶּסֶף
This noun gives the concrete economic sense behind the verse’s claim.
kaspo: His silver; his money.
כַּסְפּוֹ
This possessive form appears in the verse and places the injured person inside the owner’s property claim.
THE PATTERN
These laws make an enslaved person’s bodily harm legible through the master’s liability while stating the person’s status as owned property.
And if a man strikes his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and the servant dies under his hand, then he is surely avenged.And if a man strikes the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, so that it is ruined, he sends him free for the sake of his eye.And you shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to hold as a holding for the ages; in them you shall serve. But over your brothers, the children of Israel, you shall not tread one another with breaking.THE THREAD
And if a man strikes his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and the servant dies under his hand, then he is surely avenged.The same Hebrew root for “punished” appears in both verses. When the servant dies under the beating, the master is surely punished; when the servant lives a day or two, this verse says the master is not punished because the servant is counted as his money.
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