| 6. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with a fronted object, ve'et-bene {וְאֶת־בְּנֵי | wəʾeṯ-bənê} ‘and (as for) the sons of’, placing emphasis on those who might have been targeted. The negation lo {לֹא | lō} directly governs hemith {הֵמִית | hēmît} ‘he put to death’, forming a decisive denial of retaliatory practice. A citation formula, kakkatub {כַּכָּתוּב | kakkātûb} ‘as written’, anchors the action in written authority, followed by the locative phrase be-sefer {בְּסֵפֶר | bə-sēp̄er} plus the construct chain torat-moshe {תּוֹרַת־מֹשֶׁה | tôrat-mōšeh}. The relative clause asher-tsivah {אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּה | ʾăšer-ṣivvāh} assigns the command to Yahweh {יְהוָה | Yə-hō-wāh}, legitimizing the king’s restraint as obedience rather than weakness. The quoted law uses paired prohibitions with repeated Hophal forms lo-yumetu {לֹא־יוּמְתוּ | lō-yūmātu}, setting fathers and sons in balanced parallelism to forbid vicarious punishment. The limiter ki {כִּי | kî} with the exception phrase im-ish {אִם־אִישׁ | ʾim-ʾîš} introduces the sole basis for capital liability: be-cheto {בְּחֶטְאוֹ | bə-ḥeṭʾô} ‘in/for his sin’. The final doublet yamut yumat {ימות יוּמָת | yāmûṯ yūmāt} intensifies the legal certainty: the guilty one faces death specifically as judicial execution. |