What Does Exodus 21:31 Mean?
Whether he gores a son, or gores a daughter, according to this judgment it is done to him.
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
Whether he have gored a son, or have gored a daughter, according to this judgment shall it be done unto him.THE KEY
The judgment does not change with the child’s sex: son and daughter stand under one measure.
THE MEANING
The same judgment applies whether the ox gores a son or a daughter. The ruling falls on the owner, and the verse leaves the violence of the child’s injury fully in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the assumption that a child’s sex changes the measure of judgment: the same ruling is named for either.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁפָּט
mishpat
GROWS FROM
ש־פ־ט
To judge, decide, or render a ruling.
Mishpat carries the sense of both a ruling and the standard that gives it shape. Its word family includes judging and the judge who decides, so “according to this judgment” frames the consequence as governed by a stated measure, one applied to son and daughter alike.
ALSO GROWS
shaphat: To judge or decide a case.
שָׁפַט
The act of judging is the root beneath the ruling named in the verse.
shofet: A judge; one who decides.
שֹׁפֵט
This branch shows the person who applies the measure carried by mishpat.
mishpatim: Judgments or ordinances.
מִשְׁפָּטִים
The plural form points to a body of established rulings, not a measure shifted for each person.
THE PATTERN
A stated measure of judgment holds across differences in sex, status, and origin.
One judgment shall be yours, as for the sojourner, so for the native, for I am the LORD your God.You shall not recognize faces in judgment; hear and respond to the small as well as the great; do not shrink from the face of man; for the judgment is God's; and the word that is too hard for you, draw it near to me, and I will hear and respond to it.For there is no partiality with God.THE THREAD
You shall not recognize faces in judgment; hear and respond to the small as well as the great; do not shrink from the face of man; for the judgment is God's; and the word that is too hard for you, draw it near to me, and I will hear and respond to it.“In judgment” translates the same Hebrew word, mishpat, used in Exodus 21:31. Deuteronomy pairs it with hearing “the small as well as the great,” showing the same measure holding across differences between people.
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