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10 If a man gives his neighbor a donkey or an ox or a sheep or any beast to keep, and it dies or is injured[a] or is carried away[b] without anyone seeing it,[c] 11 then there will be an oath to the Lord[d] between the two of them, that he has not laid his hand on his neighbor’s goods, and its owner will accept this, and he will not have to pay. 12 But if it was stolen[e] from him,[f] he will pay its owner.

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Footnotes

  1. Exodus 22:10 tn The form is a Niphal participle of שָׁבַר (shavar, “to break”) which means injured, maimed, harmed, or crippled.
  2. Exodus 22:10 tn This verb is frequently used with the meaning “to take captive.” The idea here then is that raiders or robbers have carried off the animal.
  3. Exodus 22:10 tn Heb “there is no one seeing.”
  4. Exodus 22:11 tn The construct relationship שְׁבֻעַת יְהוָה (shevuʿat yehvah, “the oath of Yahweh”) would require a genitive of indirect object, “an oath [to] Yahweh.” U. Cassuto suggests that it means “an oath by Yahweh” (Exodus, 287). The person to whom the animal was entrusted would take a solemn oath to Yahweh that he did not appropriate the animal for himself, and then his word would be accepted.
  5. Exodus 22:12 tn Both with this verb “stolen” and in the next clauses with “torn in pieces,” the text uses the infinitive absolute construction with less than normal emphasis; as Gesenius says, in conditional clauses, an infinitive absolute stresses the importance of the condition on which some consequence depends (GKC 342-43 §113.o).
  6. Exodus 22:12 sn The point is that the man should have taken better care of the animal.