Deuteronomy 21:7

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

and they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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Word by word

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שפכה

shâphak

H8210

“to pour”

Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular

Appears 117× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 9:6

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 2444

to pour, pour out, spill - (Qal) - to pour, pour out - to shed (blood) - to pour out (anger or heart) (figuratively) - (Niphal) to be poured out, be shed - (Pual) to be poured out, be shed - (Hithpael) - to be poured out - to pour out oneself

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

12: words
10: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Grammatical profile

5 verbs
3 nouns
1 pronoun
3 particles

Verb forms

וְעָנ֖וּ Qal · Sequential Perfect
וְאָמְר֑וּ Qal · Sequential Perfect
שפכה Qal · Perfect
שָֽׁפְכוּ֙ Qal · Perfect
רָאֽוּ Qal · Perfect

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

שפכה to pour H8210 ×2
לֹ֤א not H3808 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 19 words from the Hebrew and 20 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 12 Hebrew tokens and 17 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Deuteronomy 21:7 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Numbers 5:19–28 The priest shall cause her to swear, and shall tell the woman, 'If no man has lain with you, and if you haven't gone aside to uncleanness, being under your husband, be free from this water of bitterness that brings a curse.
2 Samuel 16:8 Yahweh has returned on you all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose place you have reigned; and Yahweh has delivered the kingdom into the hand of Absalom your son; and, behold, you are [taken] in your own mischief, because you are a man of blood.
Job 21:21–23 For what does he care for his house after him, When the number of his months is cut off?
Job 21:31–34 Who shall declare his way to his face? Who shall repay him what he has done?
Psalms 7:3–4 Yahweh, my God, if I have done this, If there is iniquity in my hands,

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Deuteronomy 21:7 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְעָנ֖וּ וְאָמְר֑וּ יָדֵ֗ינוּ לֹ֤א שפכה שָֽׁפְכוּ֙ אֶת הַדָּ֣ם הַזֶּ֔ה וְעֵינֵ֖ינוּ לֹ֥א רָאֽוּ

and they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Deuteronomy 21:7 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ἀποκρίνω εἶπον ὁ χείρ ἐγώ οὐ ἐκχέω ὁ αἷμα οὗτος καί ὁ ὀφθαλμός ἐγώ οὐ ὁράω

and they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, and our eyes have not seen it.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וִיתִיבוּן וְיֵימְרוּן יְדָנָא לָא אַשְׁדוֹ יָת דְמָא הָדֵין וְעֵינָנָא לָא חֲזָאָה

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וִיתִיבוּן וְיֵימְרוּן גְלֵי קֳדָם יְיָ דְלָא אָתָא לִידֵינָן וּפַטְרִינֵיה מַן דְשַׁדָא יַת אִידְמָא הָדֵין וְעֵינָנָא לָא חָמוּן

and shall answer and say: It is manifest before the Lord that this hath not come by our hands, nor have we absolved him who shed this blood, nor have our eyes beheld.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Deuteronomy 21:7 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Deu 21:7 And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen [it].

Ver. 7. And they shall answer.] To the priest’s examining them, and in God’s name making inquisition for blood.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joseph Benson's Commentary

Deu 21:7-8. They shall answer — To the priests who shall examine them. This blood — This about which the present inquiry is made; or this which is here present: for it is thought the corpse of the slain man was brought into the same place where the heifer was slain. Nor have we seen or understood how or by whom this was done. Forgiven — Though there was no moral guilt in this people, yet there was a ceremonial uncleanness in the land, which was to be expiated and forgiven.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

7. answer] testify, as in Deu_5:20 (9th Comm.), and Deu_19:16.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And they shall answer and say,.... The elders of the city, at the time of the washing of their hands:

our hands have not shed this blood; have been no ways concerned in it, nor accessory to it: the Targum of Jonathan is,"it is manifest before the Lord that he did not come into our hands, nor did we dismiss him, that has shed this blood;''which is more fully explained in the Misnah (y); for had they been aware of him, or had any suspicion of him or his design, they would have detained him, or at least would not have suffered him to have departed alone:

neither have our eyes seen; it, or him; so the Targum of Jerusalem,"our eyes have not seen him that hath shed this blood;''by which expression is meant, that they had no manner of knowledge of the murderer, nor of any circumstance that could lead them to suspect or conclude who he was.

(y) Ut supra, (Sotah. c. 9.) sect. 6.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

It. Magistrates are in some degree responsible, if by their neglect the high roads are unsafe. (Calmet) --- They had testified that they had done their duty. (Worthington)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

They shall answer, to wit, to the priests who shall examine them and determine this controversy.

This blood; this about which the present inquiry is made; or this which is here present; for it is thought the corpse of the slain man was brought into the same place where the heifer was slain.

Neither have our eyes seen it; nor have we seen or understood how or by whom this was done.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

Vers. 7, 8. This act they were to accompany with a solemn declaration of their innocence of this crime, and of their entire ignorance of the perpetrator of it; and with an earnest cry to God that the sin which had been done might be forgiven. Be merciful unto; be propitiated towards. (literally, cover, rPeK for the phrase, l rpeK, see Lev_1:4) And lay not innocent blood; the blood of the innocent man who has been slain.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

They shall answer - To the priests who shall examine them. This blood - This about which the present enquiry is made: or this which is here present: for it is thought the corps of the slain man was brought into the same place where the heifer was slain. Nor have we seen or understood how or by whom this was done.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

ידינו לא שפכה [AND THEY SHALL ANSWER AND SAY,] OUR HANDS HAVE NOT SHED [THIS BLOOD] — But would it enter anyone’s mind that the elders of the court are suspect of blood-shedding?! But the meaning of the declaration is: We never saw him and knowingly let him depart without food or escort (if we had seen him we would not have let him depart without these) (Sifrei Devarim 210:2; Sotah 45b). The priests thereupon say (next verse): כפר לעמך ישראל FORGIVE UNTO THY PEOPLE ISRAEL.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Deuteronomy, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 12 words (10 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is shâphak (“to pour”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word shâphak carries the sense “to pour.” How does it shape the verse?
How does Numbers 5:19–28, which shares this passage’s theme, read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “to pour” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
«וְעָנ֖וּ» is a Qal Sequential Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Joseph Benson's Commentary read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 12 Hebrew ↔ 17 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 5 words in this verse.
“to pour” occurs 2× in this single verse.
10 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 12 words in this verse.