TO SEND — and, in the intensive form, to SEND AWAY, let go, release. It is the exodus refrain: 'SHALACH my people, that they may hold a feast to me' (5:1), the demand repeated to Pharaoh through ten plagues, and the same verb of God's own claim one verse earlier in the story — 'let my SON go' (4:23). Pharaoh's refusal is stated in the same word ('I will not let Israel go,' 5:2), so the whole contest is fought over a single verb: who has the right to send this people where. ⭐ In the intensive it is the ordinary Hebrew for DIVORCE, sending a wife away, and Deuteronomy 22 puts that sense on both sides of one chapter. The intensive form stands in three verses there: at 22:7 it is commanded and doubled for emphasis — you shall certainly send the mother bird away — and at 22:19 and 22:29 it is forbidden, he may not send her away all his days. ⚠ It reaches that chapter from the one before it, where 21:14 uses it of the captive woman a soldier no longer wants. A bird must be released; two women may not be. → first discussed at Exod 5:1