★★ The court’s two verdicts are the two nouns turned into verbs, and the sentence is a play the English can only imitate. Ve-hitsdiqu et-ha-tsaddiq ve-hirshi’u et-ha-rasha — they righteous the righteous and wicked the wicked; Hebrew builds a verb on each noun, and a court’s whole job is stated as making the words fit the men. The same causative is what Jehovah refuses to do at Exodus 23:7 (already on these pages), I will not acquit the guilty, lo-atsdiq rasha; and Solomon asks God to do at the temple exactly what this verse asks of a village bench, condemning the wicked … and justifying the righteous (1 Kings 8:32, not yet on these pages). Proverbs 17:15 (not yet on these pages) turns the pair over — he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous: an abomination to Jehovah, both of them alike — and shares two phrases with this book, the abomination to Jehovah of v16 and the both of them alike of 23:19. The two parties come forward, niggeshu, and the verb is the one the widow will use at v9 when she comes forward to the man who has refused her; a chapter that begins with litigants approaching a court ends its longest law with a woman approaching a defendant.

⭐ The convict is a son of beating, the count is kept in the judge’s presence, and the ceiling is forty — which is how Paul came to be given thirty-nine. Bin hakkot, a son of beating, stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible. The idiom is the one that makes a man deserving death a son of death: ben-mavet stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible (Saul of David at 1 Samuel 20:31, David of the rich man in Nathan’s parable at 2 Samuel 12:5, neither yet on these pages). The blows are given le-fanav, before the judge’s face, and be-mispar, by count — not a flogging but a number, administered under a witness. Then forty; he shall not add. 2 Corinthians 11:24 (not yet on these pages) has Paul say that five times I received from the Jews forty less one, and the Mishnah’s tractate Makkot (3:10) gives the rule — how many do they flog him? Forty less one — deriving it by reading the last word of v2 and the first of v3 as one phrase, be-mispar arba’im, a number [adjacent to] forty. The Greek translators had already joined the two words: the Septuagint sets by number directly against forty, the reading the rabbinic count builds on, and Paul’s back, three centuries later, is a witness to the thirty-nine. It is a fence built around the verse’s own fear, the forty-first blow.

★ The reason for the ceiling is not the pain; it is that the man under the rod is your brother, and one blow too many would make him light. Ve-niqlah achikha le-einekha, your brother be made light in your eyes: the verb qalah is the opposite of kavod, weight, the word for honour, and Isaiah 3:5 (not yet on these pages) sets the two side by side as classes of men, the light against the weighty; David uses it of himself at 1 Samuel 18:23, a poor man and lightly esteemed. So the verse counts a punishment in units of standing rather than of skin. And it calls the convicted rasha of v2 your brother — the word this chapter gives to the dead man of v5, to the man who must be built a house at v9, and to the two men fighting at v11, a man and his brother. Deuteronomy will not let a sentence strip the word off a man.

⚠ The shelf keeps the brother and loses the lightness, and the Douay adds a wound. On v3 the KJV and ASV read ‘then thy brother should seem vile unto thee’; the Geneva ‘thy brother should appear despised in thy sight’; the NWT 1984 ‘your brother is actually disgraced in your eyes’; the TLB ‘your brother be degraded in your eyes’; the NIV ‘your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes’, trading the brother for a citizen; and the Douay ‘lest thy brother depart shamefully torn before thy eyes’ — a laceration its Latin supplied and the Hebrew does not have. On v2 the Douay reads ‘they shall lay him down, and shall cause him to be beaten before them’, a plural bench where the Hebrew has one shofet with the article; the Greek has before the judges and the Latin followed it. The KJV reads ‘according to his fault, by a certain number’, a fault for the Hebrew’s wickedness; the ASV ‘according to his wickedness, by number’. The RV 1909 reads «según su delito, por cuenta» and the RV60 «según su delito será el número de azotes», a delito for rish’ah; the NVI «el número de azotes que su crimen merezca»; the TNM 1987 «varazos que correspondan en número con su hecho inicuo». On the lightness the RV 1909 reads «se envilezca tu hermano delante de tus ojos» and the RV60 «se sienta tu hermano envilecido», adding a feeling; the NVI «más de eso sería humillante para tu hermano» drops the eyes; the TNM 1987 «tu hermano realmente quede deshonrado a tus ojos».

★★ Four Hebrew words, and the verb is nearly the only one of its kind. Chasam, to muzzle, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one, and Ezekiel 39:11 (not yet on these pages), where a valley of graves blocks the travellers on a road — a stopped mouth and a stopped road, one verb. The ox is at its threshing, dish: dragged over the cut grain on the floor, with the sledges of iron that Amos 1:3 (already on these pages) says Damascus used on Gilead, the animal walks all day through food and is forbidden nothing. Deuteronomy 24:14–15 paid the hired man on his day and 23:26 let the passer-by fill his hand in another man’s field; this is the same rule for the one labourer who cannot ask. And it sits, with its own paragraph mark, between a man whose beating must stop and a widow who must not be left without a name — three laws in a row about what may not be denied a body: dignity, food, a house.

⭐ Paul quotes it twice, and the second time he calls it Scripture beside a saying of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 9:9–10 (not yet on these pages) cites the law of Moses for it and asks is it for oxen that God is concerned? … it was written for our sake, and 1 Timothy 5:18 (not yet on these pages) sets it in one breath with the labourer deserves his wages, both introduced as the Scripture says. The Greek of 1 Timothy is the Septuagint’s, its words reordered; the critical text of 1 Corinthians prints a rarer verb for muzzle, kēmoō, with the Septuagint’s phimoō as a variant reading. Either way the ox became, in the New Testament, the standing argument that a man who works at the word may eat from it.

⚠ The shelf agrees on the muzzle and differs on the animal and the grain. The KJV reads ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn’, corn being the old English for grain of any kind, and the Geneva ‘the ox that treadeth out the corn’; the ASV ‘when he treadeth out the grain’; the NIV ‘Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain’; the TLB ‘Don’t muzzle an ox as it treads out the grain’. The NWT 1984 reads ‘You must not muzzle a bull while it is threshing’, a bull for shor, and the TNM 1987 likewise «No debes poner bozal al toro mientras está trillando»; the Douay reads ‘the ox that treadeth out thy corn on the floor’, a thy and a threshing floor that are the Latin’s. The RV 1909 and RV60 read «No pondrás bozal al buey cuando trillare»; the NVI «mientras esté sacando el grano».

★★ The whole vocabulary of the institution lives in three places, and the first of them is Judah’s mouth. Yibbem, to do a husband’s-brother’s duty, stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis 38:8 (already on these pages), where Judah tells Onan to do the duty of a brother-in-law to Tamar, and v5 and v7 here. The man is the yavam and the woman the yevamah, and the feminine noun stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible — v7, v9, and Ruth 1:15 (already on these pages), where Naomi calls Orpah Ruth’s sister-in-law with it. Genesis shows the custom already binding long before Sinai, and its story is the refusal this law legislates for: Onan takes the marriage and withholds the duty. Ruth’s fourth chapter (not yet on these pages) is the one narrative in which it is carried through at a gate, before elders — by a redeemer rather than a brother, with to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance (Ruth 4:5, 10) for this verse’s to raise up a name for his brother. Ruth’s sandal is the other one: at Ruth 4:7–8 the man draws off his own sandal, with a different verb, shalaph, and hands it over as a receipt, and nobody spits — a custom the book has to explain as formerly in Israel, already antique when it was written down.

⭐ The Hebrew says son; the Greek says seed; and the Sadducees quote Moses in Judah’s words, not in these. U-ven ein-lo, and he has no son: the Septuagint reads no seed, and at Matthew 22:24 (already on these pages) the Sadducees say if someone dies without children and finish with raise up seed for his brother — which is Genesis 38:8, Judah’s raise up offspring for your brother, in the Greek’s own words shifted to the third person, and not this chapter’s raise up a name. Even their verb for the marriage is the Septuagint’s verb at Genesis 38:8, where its Deuteronomy says only that he shall live with her. Three texts, three objects of the raising: Genesis raises a seed, Deuteronomy a name, Ruth a name upon an inheritance. The shelf splits on the first word of it. The ASV and Geneva read ‘have no son’, the NIV ‘without a son’, the NWT 1984 ‘without his having a son’, the TLB ‘without a son’; the KJV reads ‘have no child’ and the Douay ‘without children’, the Greek’s width; the RV 1909 and RV60 «no tuviere hijo», the TNM 1987 «sin tener hijo», and the NVI «sin dejar hijos», plural.

★ Brothers dwelling together is Psalm 133’s line, and the law is what it costs. Ki-yeshvu achim yachdav: Psalm 133:1 (not yet on these pages) opens how good and how pleasant, brothers dwelling together with the same three roots, and the picture behind both is an estate held undivided by a dead father’s sons. That is why the widow may not become an outsider’s, outside — ish zar is the word for the man a priest’s daughter marries out at Leviticus 22:12 (already on these pages), and ha-chutsah is the outside of 24:11, where a debtor had to carry his pledge out to the creditor waiting in the street — the last chapter’s doorstep. The his of v6, the firstborn shall stand in the name of his dead brother, belongs to the husband’s brother and not to the child — Hebrew’s pronoun looks back to the man of v5, and the English is left to do the same. And his name shall not be blotted out from Israel is a clause the chapter will turn inside out at v19, where the same verb, machah, is commanded against Amalek; the clause stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, this one and Judges 21:17 (not yet on these pages), where it is said of a whole tribe, Benjamin, reduced to six hundred men. The Greek’s verb for it is exaleiphō, the verb Revelation 3:5 (already on these pages) uses for a name not blotted out of the book of life.

⭐ The ceremony is built from words this project has already met, and the spit is Miriam’s. The widow goes up to the gate, which in this book is the court (sha’ar), and comes near, niggeshah, the litigants’ verb of v1. What she does is done le-einei ha-zeqenim, before the eyes of the elders — the chapter keeps a witness’s eyes in every law: your eyes at v3, the elders’ here, your eye at v12. She pulls off his sandal with chalats, the root of the chalutzim, the men drawn out for war in Numbers 32 (already on these pages), which promised this verse; Isaiah 20:2 (not yet on these pages) uses it of Isaiah’s own sandal. Then ve-yareqah be-fanav, she spits in his face, and spit in the face stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one, and Numbers 12:14 (already on these pages), where Jehovah says that had Miriam’s father spat in her face she would have been shamed seven days. The last chapter told Israel to remember what was done to Miriam (24:9); this one does to a man what her father is imagined doing to her, and the blows of v2 fell before a face where this lands in one. Her sentence names his crime as not building his brother’s house — Sarai’s and Rachel’s verb, I shall be built up through her (Genesis 16:2, 30:3, already on these pages), the pun that hears ben, son, inside banah, build. And the name that sticks is a grammar lesson: beit chaluts ha-na’al is not the house of the pulled-off sandal but the house of the one stripped of his sandal — the participle is the man’s.

⚠ The thirteen versions name the house eleven ways, and the NIV gives him a second sandal. The KJV and ASV read ‘The house of him that hath his shoe loosed’; the Geneva ‘The house of him whose shoe is put off’; the Douay ‘the house of the unshod’; the NWT 1984 ‘The house of the one who had his sandal drawn off’ and the NWT 2013 ‘The house of the one who had his sandal removed’; the TLB ‘the home of the man who had his sandal pulled off’; the NIV ‘The Family of the Unsandaled’; the RV 1909 and RV60 «La casa del descalzado»; the NVI «los descalzos», plural, for his whole line; the TNM 1987 «La casa de aquel a quien le fue quitada la sandalia» and the TNM 2019 «La Casa de aquel a quien se le Quitó la Sandalia». At v9 the NIV reads ‘take off one of his sandals’ and the NVI «le quitará una de las sandalias», a one the Hebrew does not print and the Greek does; the KJV, ASV and Geneva keep the older ‘shoe’. The Geneva also reads ‘his kinsman shall go in unto her’ and ‘do the kinsman’s office’ at v5, folding the brother into Ruth’s redeemer, where the KJV keeps ‘her husband’s brother’ and the NWT 1984 prints the institution’s own name, ‘perform brother-in-law marriage with her’. And at v7 the verb of the man’s reluctance is chaphets, to delight in — the verb of 21:14, if you take no delight in her, said there of a captive wife a man tires of and here of a widow a man will not take; twice in five chapters the law meets a man’s cooled desire and both times it is the woman it protects.

★★ Two laws in the Bible open with men fighting, and both are about the woman caught in it. Ki-yinnatsu anashim, when men fight, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: Exodus 21:22 (already on these pages), where a pregnant woman is struck in the brawl and the law prices the harm, and this one, where a wife joins it. The verb is the one for the two Hebrews Moses found struggling at Exodus 2:13 and the two men who fought in the camp at Leviticus 24:10 (both already on these pages), and for the two sons of the woman of Tekoa at 2 Samuel 14:6 (not yet on these pages), who fought in a field and there was no one to rescue between them — matsil, the very word for what this wife tries to be, to rescue her husband. The men are a man and his brother, which is Hebrew for one another and is also the chapter’s word again.

⭐ Her hand is a palm, and what it seizes is a word in one verse of the Bible, made from the word for shame. Mevushav stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible; it is built on bosh, to be ashamed, so that the plain sense is his shameful parts — and the RV 1909’s «sus vergüenzas» is not a euphemism but the etymology itself, in Spanish. The Greek is blunt, his twins, and the TLB is as blunt, ‘the testicles’; the KJV, ASV and Douay read ‘the secrets’, the Geneva ‘his privities’, the NWT 1984 ‘his privates’, the NIV ‘his private parts’; the RV60 «sus partes vergonzosas», the NVI «los genitales», the TNM 1987 «las partes naturales». The hand is kaph, the palm — the hollow of Jacob’s thigh at Genesis 32:26, the sole of the foot that treads the land at 11:24 (both already on these pages) — the gripping surface, not the limb.

★ It is the one place the Torah’s law names a part of the body to be cut off, outside the talion list, and it ends with the fifth and last of a formula. Qatsats is the verb for Adoni-bezek’s thumbs and big toes at Judges 1:6–7 (already on these pages) and for the hands and feet of Ish-bosheth’s murderers at 2 Samuel 4:12 (not yet on these pages) — things done, not laws. Jewish law read this verse as a fine: the Sifre reasons from 19:21’s your eye shall not pity, which it took as money, that your eye shall not pity here is money too — a reading reported, not adopted; the Hebrew says what it says, and so does this translation. That closing clause is the one to weigh. Lo tachos einekha stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, every one of them in this book and every one now on these pages: the peoples of the land at 7:16, the man who entices to other gods at 13:9, the murderer at 19:13, the false witness at 19:21, and this woman. It is always the pity of the one who must carry the sentence out that is forbidden — a nation, a relative, a city’s elders, a court — and this is the only one of the five whose subject is a woman.

⚠ Seven of the thirteen versions give the pity an object the Hebrew leaves out. The KJV reads ‘thine eye shall not pity her’, the Geneva ‘thine eye shall not spare her’, the NIV ‘Show her no pity’, the Douay ‘neither shalt thou be moved with any pity in her regard’ — a her the Greek prints and the Hebrew does not; the ASV reads ‘thine eye shall have no pity’, the NWT 1984 ‘Your eye must feel no sorrow’, the TLB ‘her hand shall be cut off without pity’. The RV 1909 reads «no la perdonará tu ojo» and the RV60 «no la perdonarás», its revision dropping the eye; the NVI «No le tendrás compasión»; the TNM 1987 «Tu ojo no debe sentirse apenado» and the TNM 2019 «No debes sentir lástima». All thirteen versions on the two shelves print hand for the palm.

★★ A weight was a stone, and the idiom for two of them is a stone and a stone. Proverbs 16:11 (not yet on these pages) calls a merchant’s set the stones of the bag, and Micah 6:11 (not yet on these pages) a bag of deceitful stones — kis, the bag of v13. Hebrew says X and X for two different kinds of X. Even va-even stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible — this one, Proverbs 20:10 and 20:23. Eiphah ve-eiphah stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, this one and Proverbs 20:10, which has both pairs and ends them with this chapter’s own verdict, an abomination to Jehovah, both of them alike. The large and small are a heavy stone to buy with and a light one to sell with; the bag is the trader’s on the road, the house the seller’s at home, and the law follows the cheat to both.

⭐ The honest weight is a whole stone, and the same two words build Solomon’s temple. Even shelemah stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one; Proverbs 11:1 (not yet on these pages), a false balance is an abomination to Jehovah, but a whole stone is his delight; and 1 Kings 6:7 (not yet on these pages), where the house is built of whole stone from the quarry so that no iron tool is heard in it while it rises. The plural, whole stones, is what the altar on Mount Ebal must be made of at Deuteronomy 27:6 (now on these pages) and is at Joshua 8:31. An honest weight and an unhewn altar are the same adjective. The reward is the first half of the fifth commandment’s, so that your days may be long on the ground (5:15, already on these pages; 5:16 in English numbering), without its second half, the going-well that 22:7’s bird’s nest also earned — parents, a mother bird and a marketplace, and the same long life promised for each.

★ Leviticus 19:35–36 is the source, and Deuteronomy keeps two of its four instruments, adds the cheat’s two hiding places, and closes with Leviticus’s own word for the crime. Leviticus (already on these pages) lists honest scales, honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin; this chapter keeps the stone and the ephah, drops the scales and the hin, puts the bag and the house in, doubles the nouns, and adds a reward Leviticus did not offer. Then v16 condemns everyone who does injustice, oseh avel, and you shall do no injustice stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, both in Leviticus 19: 19:15 for the courtroom and 19:35 for the market — the same avel under a judge’s verdict and a grocer’s thumb, which is why this chapter can open with mishpat and end its trade law with the word. The prophets take the pair up: Amos 8:5 (not yet on these pages) has merchants making the ephah small and the shekel great, this verse’s small and great exactly; Hosea 12:8 puts balances of deceit in a trader’s hand; Ezekiel 45:10 repeats Leviticus for a restored temple. And to’avat Jehovah elohekha, an abomination to Jehovah your God, is the seventh of the eight times this book says it — 23:19 was the sixth, Deuteronomy 27:15 will be the last — and the phrase stands in eleven verses of Proverbs, three of them with this chapter’s stones under it.

⚠ Two versions on the two shelves print the stone; the rest translate it away. The NWT 2013 reads ‘two different stone weights’ and the TNM 2019 «dos pesas de piedra diferentes», both revisions restoring what their 1984 and 1987 editions, ‘two sorts of weights’ and «dos clases de pesas», had smoothed. The KJV reads ‘divers weights’ and the ASV ‘diverse weights’, the Geneva ‘two manner of weights’, the Douay ‘divers weights in thy bag, a greater and a less’; the NIV ‘two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light’, reading the large and small for their meaning; the TLB folds the three verses into ‘accurate scales and honest measurements’. For the ephah the Douay reads ‘a greater bushel and a less’, the NWT 1984 ‘two sorts of ephahs’, the TNM 2019 «dos recipientes para medir diferentes». On the whole stone the KJV and ASV read ‘a perfect and just weight’, the Geneva ‘a right and just weight’, the Douay ‘a just and a true weight’, the NWT 1984 ‘A weight accurate and just’, the NIV ‘accurate and honest weights and measures’, merging the two sentences into one; the RV 1909 reads «Pesas cumplidas y justas tendrás» and the RV60 «Pesa exacta y justa tendrás», the NVI «pesas y medidas precisas y justas».

★★ The last chapter promised this verse, and the twins are built to be read together. Zakhor et asher-asah, remember what he did, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: 24:9, remember what Jehovah your God did to Miriam on the road, when you came out of Egypt, and this, remember what Amalek did to you on the road, when you came out of Egypt. The frame is identical word for word and the middle is swapped — God’s act against one Israelite, an enemy’s against all of them — and so is the order each memory serves: there, watch yourself; here, blot out. Deuteronomy names Amalek only here, at v17 and v19. The book is retelling Exodus 17:8–16 (already on these pages), and adding to it: Exodus records a battle at Rephidim and Joshua’s victory, and says nothing of an ambush. Everything this verse charges — the road, the tail of the column, the weak, the weariness, the missing fear of God — is told here for the first time, forty years after, as the reason a war was declared from generation to generation.

⭐ The attack is described in four rare words, one of which is Esau’s. Asher qarekha, who met you: the verb is qarah, to happen upon, so that the ambush is told as a chance encounter, though Rashi records two further readings of the letters, among them qar, cold — that Amalek cooled a people still hot from the sea — reported here, not adopted. Zinnev, a verb made from zanav, a tail, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one, and Joshua 10:19 (not yet on these pages), where Joshua orders his men to tail the fleeing Amorite armies — Israel told to do to five kings what was done to it on the road. Ha-necheshalim, the ones giving way at the rear, stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible. And ayeph ve-yagea, faint and weary, is the pair Isaiah 40:28–31 (already on these pages) hangs its promise on — the God who does not faint or grow weary gives strength to the faint, while even youths faint and grow weary. But ayeph is first of all Esau’s: at Genesis 25:29–30 (already on these pages) he comes in from the field ayeph — famished, as that page renders it — and sells his birthright for a bowl of red; and Genesis 36:12 (already on these pages) makes Amalek Esau’s grandson, by a concubine. Esau’s line found Jacob’s children in Esau’s condition and took what it could.

★ He did not fear God is the Torah’s test for a decency older than Sinai, and Leviticus fastens the same fear to five laws for the weak. Abraham expects it even of Gerar — surely there is no fear of God in this place (Genesis 20:11); the midwives have it, against Pharaoh’s order (Exodus 1:17); Joseph, playing an Egyptian, claims it to his brothers, I fear God (Genesis 42:18) — all already on these pages. It is what a nation is expected to have without Sinai, and Amalek is charged with lacking it. You shall fear your God, ve-yareta me-elohekha, stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, all in Leviticus and all already on these pages: the deaf and the blind at 19:14, the old at 19:32, the neighbour not to be wronged at 25:17, the poor brother not charged interest at 25:36, the slave not ruled with harshness at 25:43 — each one a law for someone who cannot fight back. Amalek’s crime is that list read backwards: the ones at the tail.

⭐ The sentence is Exodus 17:14’s, with the subject changed from God to Israel, and it is the sentence Israel itself was once under. Zekher Amaleq, the remembrance of Amalek, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: Exodus 17:14, where Jehovah says I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven, and this one, where Israel is told you shall blot out. The oath has changed hands, and it has gained a condition — when Jehovah your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, the phrase 12:10 made the condition for the chosen place. It waits four centuries: 1 Samuel 15 (not yet on these pages) opens by quoting this verse back — I have marked what Amalek did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the road when he came up from Egypt — and Saul spares Agag and loses the kingdom; an Amalekite is the man who claims to have finished Saul at 2 Samuel 1:8 (already on these pages); and Haman the Agagite of Esther 3 (not yet on these pages) is read as the line’s last flowering, which is why these three verses are read in synagogues on the sabbath before Purim. The phrase for the sentence, blot out … from under the heavens, was aimed at Israel before it was aimed at Amalek: at 9:14 (already on these pages) Jehovah asks Moses to stand aside so he can blot out their name from under the heavens, after the calf, and Moses talks him out of it. And the chapter has already used the verb once, the other way: v6 raised a son so that a dead man’s name should not be blotted out from Israel. The same machah stands at both ends of the chapter — a name a family must keep from erasure, a name a nation must erase — and its last two words undo its first: remember, and you shall not forget.

⚠ The shelf divides on whether it is Amalek’s memory or his name that goes, and the Douay makes the stragglers hungry. The KJV, ASV and Geneva read ‘the remembrance of Amalek’; the NWT 1984 ‘wipe out the mention of’ Amalek; the NIV ‘the name of Amalek’ and the TLB ‘the name of Amalek’, which is the Greek’s reading, and the Douay ‘blot out his name’ after it. The RV 1909 reads «raerás la memoria de Amalec» and the RV60 «borrarás la memoria de Amalec»; the NVI «borrarás para siempre el recuerdo de los descendientes de Amalec», adding a for ever and the descendants; the TNM 1987 «borrar la mención de Amaleq»; and the TNM 2019 «debes eliminar a los amalequitas de debajo de los cielos, y nadie los recordará», the people in place of the memory. Nine of the thirteen keep a memory or a mention, three make it a name, and one makes it the people. On v18 the Douay reads ‘slew the hindmost of the army, who sat down, being weary, when thou wast spent with hunger and labour’ — an army, a sitting down and a hunger the Hebrew lacks; the Greek reads you were hungry and weary and cut off your rearguard, and the Latin carried both. The NIV reads ‘the Amalekites’ and ‘they met you on your journey’, plural, where the KJV and ASV keep the Hebrew’s one man, ‘he met thee’, and the NWT 1984 ‘he met you’; the RV60 reads «te desbarató la retaguardia de todos los débiles», the TNM 1987 «procedió a herir en tu zaga a todos los que venían rezagados», a zaga for the tail, the NVI «atacaron por la espalda a todos los rezagados». And at v17 the NWT 1984 reads ‘There should be a remembering of what’ and the TNM 1987 «Debe haber un recordar», turning the infinitive into a noun, which the NWT 2013 and TNM 2019 put back as a command.