TO PITY, to spare — and almost always with an EYE as its subject: lo tachos einekha, your eye shall not pity. ⭐ The formula stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, all in Deuteronomy and all now on these pages — the peoples of Canaan (7:16), the enticer to other gods (13:9), the murderer (19:13), the false witness (19:21) and the woman of 25:12 — and each time it is the pity of the one who must carry the sentence out that is forbidden, not the victim's. ⚠ The head word alone is wider: Ezekiel makes it God's own refrain, my eye will not pity (5:11, 7:4, 7:9, 8:18, 9:10, not yet on these pages), and Jonah 4:10–11 (not yet on these pages) turns it the other way — you pitied the gourd … and should I not pity Nineveh? ⚠ It is not racham, compassion from the womb, nor chamal, to spare in the sense of holding back; 13:9 has this word and chamal side by side. Chus is the softening of a gaze. → first discussed at Deut 25:12