At Exodus 23:5, we are told that if one sees the donkey of one’s enemy lying (on the ground) under his burden, “Ve-chadalta mei-azov lo, azov taazov imo.” חדל means “desist” and we all know the root עזב which means “leave.” Thus, on first reading, the verse seems nonsensical: a command to desist from leaving, followed by an emphatic statement to leave! What is going on?

There is a roughly parallel verse at Deuteronomy 22:4: “Do not see your brother’s donkey or ox fallen on the road, and hide yourself from it; you must raise it together.” (Hebrew: “hakem takim imo.”) This strongly suggests that those last three words at Exodus 23:5, “ … azov taazov imo,” have the same meaning as “hakem takim imo.”

The explanation begins with understanding that the widespread view today is that the biblical root עזב has two different meanings. Yes, there are those 200 times where it has a meaning like “leave,” but a few times, it has a meaning like “restore.” (I will call this meaning עזב-2, in contrast to עזב-1.)

Some examples:

• Nechemia 3:8: “They restored (ויעזב) Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall.”
• Nechemia 3:33-34: “When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, it angered him … and he mocked the Jews. He said … ‘What are the miserable Jews doing? Will they restore (היעזבו), offer sacrifice … ? Can they revive those stones … ?’”
• Many more verses with the עזב-2 meaning have been suggested, e.g., Jeremiah 49:25 (see Rashi and Daat Mikra). The two verses from Nechemiah and Jeremiah 49:25 are the only ones listed in Even-Shoshan’s concordance for the עזב-2 meaning, along with our verse. But many scholars suggest a few other verses. (Several dozen are suggested in David J. A. Clines, The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, volume six, pages 332-33.)

Now that we have this new meaning “restore,” how does this help us in our verse?

One approach interprets all the עזב words in our verse with an עזב-2 type meaning. See, e.g., The Living Torah: “You might want to refrain from helping him, but (instead), you must make every effort to help him … ” Similar is the Etz Hayim Chumash: “And would refrain from raising it, you must, nevertheless, raise it with him.”

Others do not rely on the new meaning at all and translate all the עזב words with meanings related to “leave:”

• Samuel David Luzzatto: “You will refrain from abandoning the care to him alone, and release the burden from atop the animal (so that the load falls to the ground and the animal can have some rest from its exertion).” (He is roughly following Ibn Ezra here.)
• Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch: “Thou mayest not allow thyself to leave it to him, but must forsake everything and hasten to his aid.”
• 1917 Jewish Publication Society of America: “Thou shalt forbear to pass by him; thou shalt surely release it with him.”

But these עזב-1 translations do not read well into the verse. The best approach is that of Umberto Cassuto which utilizes an עזב-1 meaning in the first part of the verse and an עזב-2 meaning in the second part. His view: “You shall cease to forsake him, (on the contrary) you shall arrange, together with him (the load on the donkey’s back).” (In the third century BCE, this was roughly how the Septuagint translated the verse.)

Cassuto explains: “There is a play here between the two verbs, which have acquired in Hebrew an identical form, although their derivations … are different  … Possibly the two Hebrew verbs were differently pronounced, and the quip was clear in the ancient Hebrew pronunciation.”

Cassuto provides evidence from South Arabic as well. (I am going to modify what he wrote a bit, as he wrote in 1951.) Classical Arabic (Quranic Arabic) has two different letters that are cognate to the Hebrew “zayin.” We see this already in inscriptions from South Arabic, which are from the Biblical period, long before classical Arabic. These two different letters originated in the early stage of the Semitic language. (Hebrew and Aramaic have a reduced alphabet of only 22 letters.)

One meaning of עזב in South Arabic is similar to עזב-1. The other meaning, spelled with the other letter cognate to the Hebrew “zayin,” means “arrange, restore, put or place.” The two different Semitic letters coalesced into the same “zayin” in the reduced alphabet of Hebrew—even though they have a different origin.

There is also, perhaps, evidence in the language of Ugaritic for an עזב-2 meaning. The Tanach is full of wordplays where similar words very near each other have different meanings. The classic example is “arumim” (naked, from the root ערה) at Genesis 2:25 which is adjacent to “arum” (cunning) at 3:1 (from ערם).

Both Daat Mikra and the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon adopt Cassuto’s interpretation of our verse.

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Further comments:

1. Rashi believes in general that Hebrew roots have only one meaning. (Richard Steiner refers to him as a “meaning minimalist.”) But here, he realizes that our עזב has an עזב-2 meaning, which he gives as עזרה—help. He interprets both phrases in our verse with this meaning. But this leads him to read “ve-chadalta” as a question: “Will you refrain from helping him?” (Others read this as a question as well.)
2. As seen from the various interpretations, there is an issue whether “ve-chadalta mei-azov lo” is part of the facts of the case, or is a question or is what one is told to do. The last is most likely. See Daat Mikra. Another interpretive issue is whether לו in this phrase refers to the animal or to its owner.
3. Nechama Leibowitz discusses our verse in her Exodus commentary (Mishpatim 7).
4. For an article that takes the surprising position that Exodus 23:5 is an instruction to leave your enemy and his animal alone (!), see the article by Alan Cooper, in Hebrew Union College Annual (1988), volume 59. (Despite his erroneous conclusion, I recommend it because the article is a very thorough discussion of the many interpretations of our verse.)
5. Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonatan believe the verse is telling you to leave behind the enmity in your heart towards the other. Several Rishonim also interpret the verse in this manner.
6. There is a very unclear expression at Deuteronomy 32:36 and four times in the book of Kings (Kings 1, 14:10 and 21:21, Kings 2, 9:8 and 14:26): “atzur ve-azuv.” Now, we may have a better handle on it. The first word means “ruler.” See Samuel 1, 9:17 and Daat Mikra and the second word we can now understand as “helper.” See Rashi on Exodus 23:5 and Deuteronomy 32:36, Daat Mikra to 32:36 and Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion, page 273. See also Sanhedrin 97a, where one of the interpretations offered of the phrase at 32:36 is “somech ve-ozer.” See also Daat Mikra, Kings 1, page 301.
7. Finally, most interesting is an article on our roots on thetorah.com by Z. Zevit: “Does a Man Need To Leave His Parents To Cling to His Wife?” This scholar suggests a reinterpretation of Genesis 2:24: “Therefore, shall a man ‘yaazov’ his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Instead of the traditional “leave” meaning, he suggests the meaning here is “care for.” He believes that instead of being cited at weddings, the verse should be cited at events relating to caring for parents! (But I did not find his interpretation convincing.)

Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. Another great wordplay is at Judges 10:4, where we have עירים with the meanings “donkeys” and “cities.”