★★ These four verses are one sentence, and the sentence does not tell a man to divorce his wife; it assumes he has, and rules only on what may not follow. Verse 1 opens with ki, when, and the clauses that run from there to the end of v3 — he finds something indecent, he writes, he puts in her hand, he sends away, she goes out, she becomes another man’s, the second man hates her or dies — are all the condition. The verdict arrives at v4: her first husband may not turn back to take her. That is the whole law. It never says a man may divorce, and never says he must; it says that a divorce once carried out, and followed by a second marriage, is final. ⚠ The shelf splits on the grammar, and the split is old. The KJV reads ‘then let him write her a bill of divorcement’, the Geneva ‘then let him write her a bill of divorcement’, the ASV ‘that he shall write her a bill of divorcement’, the Douay ‘he shall write a bill of divorce’, the NWT 1984 ‘he must also write out a certificate of divorce for her’, the RV60 «le escribirá carta de divorcio» and the TNM 1987 «entonces él tendrá que escribirle un certificado de divorcio» — every one of them closing the condition at the end of v1 and turning the writing of the certificate into an instruction. The NIV keeps the sentence whole, ‘If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him… and he writes her a certificate of divorce… and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man… then her first husband’, and the TLB reads ‘he may write a letter’, a permission; the NVI goes furthest the other way, «solo podrá despedirla si le entrega un certificado de divorcio», making the certificate the one condition on which a dismissal is allowed at all. This translation keeps the four verses as the one conditional sentence the Hebrew makes them. ⭐ The argument is in the Gospels before it is in any version. At Matthew 19:7 (already on these pages) the Pharisees say Moses commanded a certificate, eneteilato, and at 19:8 Jesus answers that Moses permitted, epetrepsen — the same question of whether v1 is an order or a description, put a millennium before the King James translators answered it one way and the NIV the other.

⭐ The certificate is a sefer keritut, a document of cutting, and the verb under it is the verb Hebrew uses of cutting a covenant. Genesis 15:18 (already on these pages) has Jehovah cut a covenant with Abram, karat berit; a marriage ends in the same root. The phrase stands in four verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one, v3, and two in the prophets where the husband who writes it is God. Jeremiah 3:8 (not yet on these pages) has him say of the northern kingdom I sent her away and gave her her certificate of severance, and Isaiah 50:1 asks Zion’s children two questions built out of two of this chapter’s laws at once: where is your mother’s certificate of severance, with which I sent her away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I sold you? — the creditor there is the nosheh of v11. Jeremiah 3:1 quotes the law itself, clause for clause, if a man sends away his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man’s, will he turn back to her again?, and answers that he will not, and that Israel is being asked to anyway. ⚠ The Torah has a word for the woman on the far side of this document, gerushah, the driven-out one, and it stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, four of them laws already on these pages — the priest who may not marry her at Leviticus 21:7 and 21:14, the priest’s daughter who comes home as one at 22:13, and her vow at Numbers 30:10. The one chapter that describes how a woman comes to be a gerushah never uses the word. It also does not use the sentence chapter 22 used twice, of the slanderer at 22:19 and the rapist at 22:29: he may not send her away all his days. Those two men forfeited what this chapter takes for granted every other husband has.

★ Ervat davar, the nakedness of a thing, is the phrase the last chapter would not let God see in the camp, and here it is what a husband finds in his wife. It stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, Deuteronomy 23:15 and this one, and the two thousand years of argument over what it means here — the school of Shammai reading it of sexual sin, the school of Hillel of any displeasure at all — is set out in the note to Matthew 19:3–9, where the Pharisees’ for any cause is one school’s slogan. What can be said from the Hebrew alone is small: ervah is the word of Leviticus 18 for what may not be uncovered, and davar is a thing or a matter, and the two together name a fault the text does not specify. The shelf specifies it for the reader. The KJV reads ‘some uncleanness in her’, the Douay ‘for some uncleanness’, the Geneva ‘some filthiness in her’, the ASV ‘some unseemly thing’, the NIV ‘something indecent about her’, the NWT 1984 ‘something indecent on her part’, the RV 1909 «alguna cosa torpe», the RV60 «alguna cosa indecente», the NVI «algo indecoroso» and the TNM 2019 «algo vergonzoso en ella». ⚠ The TLB drops the phrase and prints what Hillel taught as if it were the text: ‘If a man doesn’t like something about his wife, he may write a letter’.

⚠ Verse 4 gives three reasons in a row, and each is stated in a form found nowhere else. She has been made unclean, huttamma’ah — a passive built on the reflexive of tame, a shape of the verb so rare that Hebrew grammars list its instances, and the word it is built on is the ritual-status word of Leviticus, not a moral one. The shelf reads it both ways: the KJV, ASV, Geneva, Douay, NIV and NWT 1984 read ‘defiled’, the RV 1909 «amancillada», the NVI «impura», the TNM 1987 «contaminada» — and the RV60 «envilecida», degraded, which turns a status into a judgement on her. Then it is an abomination before Jehovah: this book says an abomination to Jehovah eight times, in the construct 22:5’s note tallied, and this sentence, with before, stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible. And you shall not make the land sin — the causative of the verb to sin with the land as its object stands in one verse. Deuteronomy 21:23 (already on these pages) said the same thing of a corpse left hanging in a different word, you shall not defile your ground; Leviticus 18:25 has the land vomit out its inhabitants; here the land is not dirtied but made a sinner. The KJV and ASV read ‘thou shalt not cause the land to sin’, the NIV ‘Do not bring sin upon the land’, the NWT 1984 ‘you must not lead the land… into sin’, the TLB ‘this would bring guilt upon the land’, and the RV 1909 and RV60 «no has de pervertir la tierra», which makes the land the thing perverted rather than the thing that sins.

★★ Deuteronomy 20:7 sent the betrothed man home from the muster lest he die in the battle and another man take her; this verse finishes the thought for the man who has married her. Ishah chadashah, a new wife, stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible. He does not go out with the tsava, the army, and nothing shall pass over him for any matter — and the verb may be the one the census used. Everyone who passes over to the counted stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible, Exodus 30:13, 30:14 and 38:26 (all already on these pages), where each man of twenty and over crosses the line into the muster and pays his half-shekel as he goes; if that is the idiom here, the newly married man is a man no muster passes over. The shelf reads it as duty in general: the KJV and ASV ‘neither shall he be charged with any business’, the Douay ‘neither shall any public business be enjoined him’, the NIV ‘or have any other duty laid on him’, the NWT 1984 ‘nor should anything else be imposed onto him’, the RV60 «ni en ninguna cosa se le ocupará», the NVI «ni le impongas ningún otro deber». He is naqi for his house — the word for being clear of a charge, which Genesis 24:8 (already on these pages) used of a servant released from an oath and 1 Kings 15:22 (not yet on these pages) uses of a levy from which no one is exempt. The Douay prints both senses of the Latin at once, ‘free at home without fault’.

⚠ The last clause turns on a vowel, and the shelf splits along the Latin. The Masoretic text points ve-simmach et ishto as a causative: he shall make his wife rejoice, she is the object and he is the one at work. The same consonants can be read as the simple verb, and he shall rejoice with his wife, which is how the Vulgate took them — so the Douay reads ‘that for one year he may rejoice with his wife’, and the Geneva, on this verse, follows the Latin rather than the Hebrew, ‘and rejoice with his wife, which he hath taken’. The rest keep the pointing: the KJV ‘shall cheer up his wife’, the ASV ‘shall cheer his wife’, the NWT 1984 ‘he must make his wife whom he has taken rejoice’, the NIV ‘bring happiness to the wife he has married’, the RV 1909 «para alegrar á su mujer que tomó», the TNM 1987 «tiene que regocijar a su esposa». ⚠ The TLB gives the year to the man — ‘he shall be free to be at home, happy with his wife’ — and so makes him, not her, the one whose happiness the law is for. This translation prints make the wife he has taken rejoice, because the vowels say so and because the year is hers.

★★ The word is a dual, a pair of stones, and the second word is the one that rides. Rechayim has the ending Hebrew gives to things that come in twos — hands, eyes, the two stones of a household mill — and rakhev, from the root of riding, is the upper stone that sits on the lower and turns. Read out from hits that are also the months of the year and the sons of Korah, the noun stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, and on these pages it has already been the slave girl behind the millstones who loses her firstborn at Exodus 11:5, the manna the people ground in mills at Numbers 11:8, and, at Jeremiah 25:10, one of the signs of a living house that God will silence — the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. Isaiah 47:2 (not yet on these pages) tells Babylon’s daughter to take the millstones and grind meal. Every household ground its own flour every morning; take the mill and nobody in the house eats tomorrow. That is why the reason clause says what it says: it is a nefesh he is taking in pledge. The upper stone alone appears once more, in a woman’s hands: at Judges 9:53 (not yet on these pages) a piece of an upper millstone, pelach rekhev, thrown from a wall, crushes Abimelech’s skull, and 2 Samuel 11:21 still remembers it as the way to die that a soldier should keep away from a wall.

⚠ The shelf divides on nefesh the way it always does, and on the pair of stones the KJV adds a word. The KJV reads ‘the nether or the upper millstone’, supplying nether where the Hebrew has the pair-word and its rider; the ASV reads ‘the mill or the upper millstone’, the NWT 1984 ‘a hand mill or its upper grindstone’, and the NIV makes the dual explicit, ‘a pair of millstones—not even the upper one’. Then the life: the KJV and ASV ‘for he taketh a man’s life to pledge’, the Douay ‘for he hath pledged his life to thee’, the RV 1909 «porque sería prendar la vida», the RV60 «sería tomar en prenda la vida del hombre»; the NWT 1984 ‘it is a soul that he is seizing as a pledge’ and the TNM 1987 «es de un alma que se está apoderando» keep their habit with the word; and the modern half of both shelves turns it into economics — the NIV ‘a person’s livelihood’, the NWT 2013 ‘someone’s livelihood’, the TLB ‘a tool by which its owner gains his livelihood’, the NVI «su propia subsistencia», the TNM 2019 «el medio de vida». The Geneva stands apart: ‘for this gage is his living’. The verb, chaval, to take in pledge, comes twice in this one short verse and stands in three verses of the Torah — the neighbour’s cloak at Exodus 22:26 (already on these pages), this mill, and the widow’s garment at v17. Outside the Torah it is the prophets’ test of a man: Ezekiel 18:16 (not yet on these pages) says of the righteous son that he has taken no pledge, and Eliphaz’s charge against Job at Job 22:6 is you have taken pledges from your brothers for nothing, and stripped the naked of their clothing.

★★ The verb 21:14 promised is here, and its two verses answer each other. Hit’amer stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: the soldier who tires of the woman he took in war may not traffic in her, and the man who steals a person from among his brothers traffics in him and sells him, and dies for it. The one law forbids the act to a man who might think a captive is his to sell; the other names it as what a kidnapper does. Exodus 21:16 (already on these pages) is the older form — whoever kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death — and Deuteronomy rewrites it three ways: the victim is from among his brothers, from the sons of Israel; the middle term, being found with him, becomes trafficking in him; and the sentence closes with the formula this book keeps for its capital cases, you shall burn out the evil from your midst, which stands in nine verses of the Hebrew Bible, all Deuteronomy, from the false prophet at 13:6 to this thief. ⚠ The Hebrew joins the two acts with and, and eight of the thirteen witnesses print or: the KJV reads ‘maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him’, the ASV ‘deal with him as a slave, or sell him’, the Geneva ‘maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him’, the NIV ‘treating or selling them as a slave’, the TLB ‘treats him as a slave or sells him’, the RV60 «le hubiere esclavizado, o le hubiere vendido», the NVI «lo trata como esclavo o lo vende», the RV 1909 «ó la hubiere vendido». The other five keep the conjunction: the NWT 1984 reads ‘dealt tyrannically with him and sold him’, the NWT 2013 ‘mistreated him and sold him’, the TNM 1987 «y lo haya vendido», the TNM 2019 lists all three, «secuestrado, maltratado y vendido», and the Douay is the fifth. Whether either act alone is capital, or only both together, is a question the Hebrew’s and leaves open and the rabbinic law, as it is reported, answered by requiring both. The Douay follows a Latin that read the first verb differently again: ‘If any man be found soliciting his brother… and selling him shall take a price’.

⭐ The two verbs of this verse are the two verbs of Joseph’s own account of what was done to him. His brothers say come, let us sell him at Genesis 37:27, and Joseph, in the prison, says I was stolen — stolen away — from the land of the Hebrews at Genesis 40:15 (both already on these pages): makhar and ganav, sold and stolen, a brother from among his brothers. By this law the sons of Jacob die. Ganav is also the plainest word in the commandment you shall not steal, at Exodus 20:15 and Deuteronomy 5:19 (20:12 and 5:16 in this project’s Hebrew numbering, which counts the four short commandments as one verse), and a rabbinic reading, reported here rather than adopted, holds that the commandment itself is about this theft and no other — because it stands between murder and adultery, which are capital, and stealing an object is not. ⚠ The shelf renames the criminal. The Hebrew calls him ha-gannav, the thief, the ordinary noun; the KJV, ASV and Geneva keep ‘that thief shall die’ and the RV 1909 and RV60 «el tal ladrón», while the NIV, NWT 1984 and TLB print a ‘kidnapper’ and the NVI and TNM 2019 «el secuestrador» — accurate, and a word the Hebrew does not have, since the text’s point is that this is theft.

★★ Verse 8 is a law that contains no law; it refers the reader to the priests, and v9 tells him why. The instruction is to do all that the priests, the Levites, instruct you, which is Leviticus 13 and 14 (already on these pages), the two chapters in which a priest looks at a swelling, a scab or a bright spot and pronounces it clean or unclean; the phrase nega ha-tsaraat, with the article, stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible, two of them in Leviticus 14 and this one. The verse doubles the verb shamar and then triples it — watch yourself… keep very carefully… you shall keep to do — and lishmor me’od, to keep very carefully, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, this one and Psalm 119:4 (not yet on these pages), where it is said of God’s precepts as a whole. Then the reason, and it is a name. Read out from hits that are bitter waters and men lifting an offering, Moses’s sister Miriam is named in twelve verses of the Hebrew Bible, a second Miriam of Judah having a thirteenth, and this is the only one in Deuteronomy; after it she is named twice more, in the genealogy of 1 Chronicles 5:29 and at Micah 6:4 (neither yet on these pages), where she stands beside Moses and Aaron as one of the three God sent ahead of Israel. What Jehovah did to Miriam is Numbers 12 (already on these pages): she and Aaron spoke against Moses, and at 12:10 she alone was struck, a scaly disease, white as snow, and shut outside the camp seven days while the whole people waited. The law of v8 is a law about submitting to a priest’s verdict on exactly that disease, and the memory attached to it is of the one Israelite the text shows being put outside the camp for it — the prophetess, the sister of the man who gave the law. A rabbinic reading, reported here and not adopted, took the remembering as a warning against the sin that brought her disease on, speaking against a brother.

⭐ The sentence has a twin one chapter ahead, and the two remembered things are not alike. Zakhor et asher asah, remember what he did, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one, and Deuteronomy 25:17 (now on these pages), remember what Amalek did to you on the road, when you came out of Egypt. The two verses open with the same four words and close with the same three — the closing clause stands in three verses, all within three chapters: 23:5, this one and 25:17 — but one remembers what God did to an Israelite and the other what an enemy did to Israel, and the first is a caution and the second a commission. The form of the verb is the same absolute that opens the sabbath commandment at Exodus 20:8, zakhor, remembering as a standing order rather than an act; and v8 switches to the plural — the priests instruct you all, you all shall keep to do — inside a chapter written to one man, the same mixture 23:5 showed, where the nation is plural on the road and singular when it is cursed.

⚠ Eleven of the thirteen witnesses keep the old word for the disease, and one of them renames the woman. The KJV, ASV, Geneva and NWT 1984 read ‘the plague of leprosy’, the RV60 «la plaga de la lepra», the TNM 2019 «casos de lepra»; the NIV reads ‘defiling skin diseases’ and the NVI «una infección de la piel» — the dictionary entry for tzaraat sets out why neither leprosy nor infection is what the Hebrew names. The Douay follows a Latin that made the law about not catching it: ‘Observe diligently that thou incur not the stroke of the leprosy’. And at v9 the Douay reads ‘what the Lord your God did to Mary’ — the Vulgate’s Mariae, which is the same name the Greek Bible gives Moses’s sister and the mother of Jesus alike, Mariam, so that the woman of Matthew 1:16 (already on these pages) carries the name of the woman shut outside this camp. The TLB reduces the priests to ‘the priest’ and drops the Levites.

★★ The noun for a pledge exists in four verses of the Hebrew Bible, and all four are this law. Avot stands in four verses, v10, v11, v12 and v13; its verb was already this book’s at 15:6 and 15:8 (already on these pages), where Israel will lend on pledge to many nations and must surely lend on pledge to a poor brother whatever he lacks. The chapter that ordered the loan now regulates its collection, and it does so with a threshold. The creditor stands outside — ba-chuts, and then, at the end of v11, ha-chutsah, outside again, the Hebrew saying it twice in one sentence — and the debtor, the man to whom you are lending, ha-ish asher attah nosheh vo, brings out what he chooses to give. The poor man’s house is a place his creditor may not enter, and the pledge is his to pick. Exodus 22:26–27 (already on these pages) had the older law, in which the thing pledged is already a cloak: if you take your neighbor’s cloak as security, you must return it to him before the sun goes down, because it is his only covering… In what else shall he sleep? Deuteronomy keeps the sunset and the sleeping and adds the doorstep. ⚠ The KJV alone changes who is being lent to: ‘When thou dost lend thy brother any thing’. The Hebrew is re’akha, your neighbour, and the ASV ‘thy neighbor’, Geneva ‘thy neighbor’, NIV ‘your neighbor’, NWT 1984 ‘your fellowman’ and RV60 «tu prójimo» all say so; in a chapter that has been careful about brother, stranger and neighbour, the difference is not small.

⭐ The same verb lies down twice, and the second time it is the debtor. You shall not lie down in his pledge, lo tishkav ba-avoto, at v12, and he shall lie down in his cloak, ve-shakhav be-salmato, at v13: shakhav both times, and the preposition is in. The pledge is the cloak, the cloak is the bed, and the law is that only one of the two men may sleep in it, and it is the one who owns it. Salmah is the simlah of 22:3 with two of its letters exchanged, the same spelling Exodus 22:26 uses of the pledged cloak, and it is the garment that Deuteronomy 29:4 (not yet on these pages) will say did not wear out in forty years. The sunset is ke-vo ha-shemesh, when the sun goes in, the idiom of 23:12, where the unclean man comes back into the camp as the sun does, and of 16:6, where the Passover is killed at the going in of the sun; the phrase stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, three of them laws in this book keyed to the same hour. ⚠ On v12 the shelf prints with where the Hebrew has in — the KJV and ASV ‘thou shalt not sleep with his pledge’, the Geneva ‘if it be a poor body, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge’, the NWT 1984 ‘you must not go to bed with his pledge’, the RV 1909 «no duermas con su prenda» — and the Douay reads ‘the pledge shall not lodge with thee that night’. The two witnesses that keep the picture are the two that usually paraphrase it away: the TLB reads ‘If the man is poor and gives you his cloak as security, you are not to sleep in it’, and the NVI «Si es pobre y en prenda te ofrece su manto, no se lo retengas durante la noche» — both naming the cloak at v12, a verse before the Hebrew does. At v13 the NIV reads ‘Then they will thank you’ and the NVI «Así estará él agradecido contigo»; the verb is berakh, and the KJV, ASV, Douay, NWT 1984, TLB and RV60 all print bless.

★ The reward is the noun of Genesis 15:6 and Deuteronomy 6:25, and the price of it here is one returned cloak. And it will be righteousness for you before Jehovah your God: Deuteronomy 6:25 (already on these pages) promised it will be righteousness for us if we keep to do all this commandment, the whole law at once, and the noun with that verb stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, that one and this — every commandment there, a single garment handed back at dusk here. The Douay reads ‘thou mayst have justice before the Lord thy God’, the Latin iustitia, and the Spanish shelf has no other word: the RV60 «te será justicia delante de Jehová», the NVI «habrás actuado con justicia», the TNM 2019 «lo verá como un acto justo de tu parte». The prophets read this paragraph as the measure of a man. Ezekiel 18:7 (not yet on these pages) lists among the marks of the righteous that he restores to the debtor his pledge; Amos 2:8 indicts Israel for lying down on garments taken in pledge beside every altar, the cloak of v13 used as a bed by the wrong man; and Job 24:9–10 sets the two halves of this law beside each other, they take a pledge from the poor — naked they go about without clothing, and hungry they carry the sheaf, the omer of v19 in the arms of the men it was left for.

★★ Leviticus 19:13 (already on these pages) said the wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until morning; Deuteronomy moves the deadline back to sunset and gives the reason Leviticus left out. On his day you shall give him his wage, and the sun shall not go in upon it — the same verb of the sun that returned the cloak two verses before — for he is poor, and to it he lifts up his life. Nose et nafsho with the wage as its object stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible; the idiom itself is the one Jeremiah 22:27 (already on these pages) uses of exiles and the land they long with all their soul to return to, and Psalm 25:1 (not yet on these pages) of a worshipper, to you, Jehovah, I lift up my soul. What the exile does toward his country and the psalmist toward God, a day-labourer does toward his day’s pay, because it is his supper. He is sakhir ani ve-evyon, a hired man poor and needy, and the pair has a history: ani ve-evyon stands in fifteen verses of the Hebrew Bible, and this is the only one in the Torah — 15:11 had the two words with your on each — while the other fourteen are psalms, prophets, Job and Proverbs, among them Jeremiah 22:16 (already on these pages), where judging the cause of the poor and needy is what it means to know God, and Ezekiel 16:49 (not yet on these pages), where not strengthening their hand is the sin of Sodom. The hired man may be a brother or a ger; the law does not care which.

★ The last two clauses are 15:9’s, with one negative added, and the third verse of the formula the last chapter promised. He cry out against you to Jehovah stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, 15:9 and this one, and and it be sin in you in three: the man who refuses his poor brother a loan because the release year is near, the man who is slow to pay a vow at 23:22, and the man who holds a labourer’s wage past sundown — money kept a little longer than it should be, three times, and God as the court of appeal each time. The cry is the widow’s and the orphan’s at Exodus 22:23 (already on these pages), if they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, given now to a man with a job. It carries forward. Jeremiah 22:13 (already on these pages) pronounces woe on the king who makes his neighbour work for nothing and does not give him his wages; Malachi 3:5 (not yet on these pages) puts those who oppress the hired man in his wages in one list with sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers; and James 5:4 (not yet on these pages) has the wage itself do the crying — the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, which you kept back, cry out. ⭐ And Matthew 20:8 (already on these pages) keeps this law inside a parable: when evening came, the owner of the vineyard says to his steward, call the workers and pay them the wage. The landowner in the story is not being generous when he pays at evening; he is obeying this verse. The generosity is in what he pays.

⚠ The shelf agrees on the man and disagrees on what he does with his soul. The KJV reads ‘an hired servant that is poor and needy’ and the ASV ‘a hired servant that is poor and needy’, the Geneva reverses the pair, ‘needy and poor’, the NIV ‘a hired worker who is poor and needy’, the RV60 «al jornalero pobre y menesteroso», the NVI «del jornalero pobre y necesitado»; the Douay turns the man into his pay, ‘Thou shalt not refuse the hire of the needy, and the poor’. Then the lifted soul. The NWT 1984 and the TNM 1987 are the two literal witnesses, ‘he is in trouble and is lifting up his soul to his wages’ and «está alzando su alma a su salario»; the KJV and ASV read ‘setteth his heart upon it’, the Geneva ‘therewith sustaineth his life’, the Douay ‘with it maintaineth his life’, the RV 1909 and RV60 «con él sustenta su vida», the NIV ‘are counting on it’, the NWT 2013 ‘his life depends on his wages’, the TLB ‘he needs it right away’, the NVI «cuenta solo con ese dinero». All of them true, and only two of them the Hebrew’s picture. The TLB also merges the two verses into one, so its reader cannot find where the law of the wage begins.

★★ This is a verse the history books quote with its source named. 2 Kings 14:6 (not yet on these pages) says of Amaziah that when he executed his father’s assassins he did not kill their sons, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, which Jehovah commanded, saying: fathers shall not be put to death for sons, and sons shall not be put to death for fathers — the verse word for word; 2 Chronicles 25:4 repeats it. Ish be-chet’o, each man for his own sin, stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible, this one and those two quotations. The prophets then carry the principle out of the courtroom. Jeremiah 31:29–30 (already on these pages; 31:28–29 in this project’s Hebrew numbering) retires the proverb the fathers ate sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge with each one will die for his own guilt, and Ezekiel 18:20 (not yet on these pages) states it as a rule of the world rather than of a court: the soul that sins shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.

⚠ The same book says, nineteen chapters earlier, that God attends to the guilt of fathers upon sons, and upon the third and upon the fourth generation, and readings differ on how the two verses fit. That is Deuteronomy 5:9 (already on these pages; 5:8 in the Hebrew numbering), inside the Ten Commandments. The narrowest reading, and the one the wording supports, is that the two sentences have different subjects: 5:9 describes what God does, and this verse is written in the passive a court uses, yumat, shall be put to death — it is a law for judges, about what a human tribunal may do to a family, and says nothing about what God may do to a nation. A rabbinic reconciliation, reported here rather than adopted, reads 5:9’s of those who hate me as limiting the visitation to children who keep up their fathers’ deeds. What the Bible’s own narratives do with the rule is mixed and is not sanded here: Numbers 16:32 (already on these pages) has the earth swallow Korah’s households, and Joshua 7:24–25 (not yet on these pages) stones Achan’s sons and daughters with him; Amaziah of Judah is the one man the text shows reading this verse and acting on it. ⚠ The shelf is close and the additions are small. The NIV reads ‘Parents are not to be put to death for their children’, where the Hebrew has fathers and sons; the NWT 2013 reads ‘A person should be put to death only for his own sin’ and the TNM 2019 «Cada persona debe morir solo por su propio pecado», an only the Hebrew implies and does not print; the TLB reads ‘every man worthy of death shall be executed for his own crime’, adding both the worthiness and the crime. The RV 1909 and RV60 print the active, «cada uno morirá por su pecado», and lose the court; the KJV, ASV, Geneva and NWT 1984 keep ‘be put to death’, which is where the verse’s whole scope lives.

★★ You shall not bend justice is a sentence this project has already printed twice, and each time it named a different person whose case is bent. Lo tatteh mishpat stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible: Exodus 23:6, of your poor in his lawsuit; Deuteronomy 16:19, addressed to the judges, of nobody in particular; and this verse, of the stranger and the orphan (all already on these pages). Deuteronomy 27:19 (now on these pages) makes it a curse the whole people answers Amen to, with the widow added to the list. Here she is in the second half instead, and what may not be taken from her is her beged, the ordinary word for a garment — not pledged and returned at sunset like the poor man’s cloak of v13, but not pledged at all. Deuteronomy 10:18 (already on these pages) is the verse under this one: God does justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the stranger, to give him bread and a garment. He gives the stranger a simlah; you do not take the widow’s. Stranger, orphan and widow together in one verse stands in eleven verses of Deuteronomy, and four of them are this chapter — here, and the three harvest laws that follow; the other seven are the feast tables of 14:29, 16:11 and 16:14, the God of 10:18, the tithe of 26:12–13 and the curse of 27:19. The older law, Exodus 22:22–24 (already on these pages), had a threat where this has a memory: you shall not mistreat any widow or orphan… your own wives will become widows, and your children fatherless. The prophets took the triad from here: Jeremiah 22:3 (already on these pages), do no wrong, do no violence, to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow; Isaiah 1:17 and 1:23 (already on these pages), a city judged by whether the widow’s case reaches its princes; Malachi 3:5 (not yet on these pages), where those who oppress the hired man in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the stranger are one clause, the whole of this chapter’s vv14–17 in a single prophetic breath.

★ Remember that you were a slave is said twice in this chapter, and it is said five times in the Bible, all of them in this book. Ve-zakharta ki eved hayita stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible: the sabbath commandment at Deuteronomy 5:15 (5:14 here), the freed slave’s provisions at 15:15, the Feast of Weeks at 16:12 (all already on these pages), this verse and v22. Two of the five continue and Jehovah your God redeemed you, va-yifdekha — 15:15 and this one, the freed slave and the widow’s garment, both laws that give something to someone who cannot enforce the gift — and v22 leaves the redemption out. The verb is padah, to buy back at a price, the firstborn’s verb; the memory is not that Egypt was hard but that Israel was purchased out of it, and the purchase is what obliges. The KJV and ASV read ‘a bondman’, the Geneva ‘a servant’, the Douay ‘a slave’, the NIV makes the nation plural, ‘you were slaves’, the NWT 1984 ‘you became a slave’, the RV60 «fuiste siervo», the NVI «fuiste esclavo».

★★ Leviticus 19:9–10 and 23:22 (already on these pages) told the owner what to leave: the edge of the field, the fallen ears, the fallen grapes, the unstripped vine. Deuteronomy adds the sheaf he forgot and the olive tree, and changes who it is for. Leviticus said for the poor and for the stranger; this chapter says, three times in three verses, for the stranger, for the orphan and for the widow. The forgotten omer is a law with no way to keep it on purpose: a farmer cannot set out to forget a sheaf, and the rabbis, in an observation reported here rather than verified, called it the one commandment a man fulfils without knowing he has. And turn back to take, shuv le-qachat, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, and both are this chapter: the first husband at v4 may not turn back to take her, and the reaper here shall not turn back to take it. The chapter’s first law and its last are the same three words, once of a wife and once of a bundle of barley, and nowhere else in the Bible are they said. ⭐ The book that acts this law out is Ruth. Ruth 1:22 (already on these pages) leaves Naomi and Ruth in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, and Ruth 2 (not yet on these pages) is this paragraph in practice: Ruth asks to glean among the ears after whoever in whose eyes I find favour — the phrase of v1, in a field — Boaz tells his men let her glean even among the sheaves, and at evening she beat out what she had gleaned, tachbot, the verb of v20. A widow and a Moabite, the two kinds of person the harvest is left for, and the harvest she gathers is the line of David.

★ Three verbs for three crops, and each is the trade’s own word. Chavat, to beat, is how olives come off a tree, with a pole; it stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible — this olive, Ruth beating out her barley, Gideon beating out wheat in a winepress at Judges 6:11, and Isaiah 27:12 and 28:27 (none yet on these pages), the last of them black cumin beaten with a rod. Te-fa’er, go over the boughs, stands in one verse in this sense: the consonants otherwise spell tif’eret, glory, and the noun pu’rah, a bough, in Isaiah 10:33 and Ezekiel 31:5–6 (not yet on these pages), so the verb is built from the branch — to bough the tree, to go through it a second time. And olel, to glean a vineyard, stands in two verses of the Torah, Leviticus 19:10 and this one; outside it Jeremiah 6:9 has the remnant of Israel gleaned as a vine and Judges 20:45 turns the verb on men, five thousand Benjaminites gleaned on the highways, while its noun olelot, the gleanings, is the prophets’ word for what is left of a people: Obadiah 1:5 (already on these pages), if grape-gatherers came to you, would they not leave gleanings?, and Isaiah 17:6 (not yet on these pages), which draws v20 exactly, gleanings shall be left in it, as when an olive tree is beaten: two or three berries at the top of the topmost bough. Acharekha, after you, closes v20 and v21 alike: the law is not against picking, but against the second pass.

⚠ The shelf keeps the three verbs in its old witnesses and blurs them in its new ones, and one version drops the triad. On the olive the KJV, ASV and Geneva read ‘thou shalt not go over the boughs again’, the NWT 1984 ‘you must not go over its boughs following up yourself’, the NIV ‘do not go over the branches a second time’, the RV60 «no recorrerás las ramas que hayas dejado tras de ti»; the NWT 2013 reads ‘you should not repeat the procedure on its branches’ and the TNM 2019 «no repitas el procedimiento», and the tree is gone. On the vine the KJV reads ‘thou shalt not glean it afterward’, the Geneva ‘thou shalt not gather the grapes clean after thee’, the RV 1909 and RV60 «no rebuscarás» — Spanish has the exact verb — and the NIV ‘do not go over the vines again’. ⚠ The TLB reads at v21 ‘don’t glean the vines after they are picked, but leave what’s left for those in need’, replacing the third naming of the stranger, the orphan and the widow with a category; at v19 and v20 it prints ‘migrants, orphans, and widows’, the one witness on either shelf to call the ger a migrant. On the sheaf the KJV and Geneva read ‘When thou cuttest down thine harvest’, the Douay ‘When thou hast reaped the corn in thy field, and hast forgot and left a sheaf’, and the NIV ‘you overlook a sheaf’, where the Hebrew is shakhachta, you forgot — a small change that turns an accident into a carelessness. And at v22 the Douay closes the chapter with a word the Hebrew does not have, ‘thou also wast a bondman’.