These are still Yahweh’s words to the people through Moses. You shall keep the sabbath uses the plural you, and it begins with the usual conjunction waw. New American Bible translates waw as “Therefore,” but most translations omit it. The same word for keep is used in verse 13. Because it is holy for you is literal and not entirely clear, so Good News Translation omits for you as unnecessary: “because it is sacred” (similarly New American Bible). New Jerusalem Bible retains for you with a slightly different meaning, “you will regard it as holy,” and Durham has “because it is set apart for you.” Contemporary English Version has “Keep the Sabbath holy.”

Every one who profanes it shall be put to death is literally “its profaner dying he shall die.” This is the form of the so-called “participial laws” in 21.12-17. (See the introductory comment before 21.12.) It is a strong positive statement against “profaning” or “desecrating” the sabbath. To “profane” means to abuse it, or to treat it with irreverence. Contemporary English Version combines this clause with the next one, keeping the sentence positive, with “If you work on the Sabbath…,” while Good News Translation changes the positive to the negative but retains the positive for the rest of the verse, “Whoever does not keep it, but works on that day, is to be put to death.”

Whoever does any work on it, literally “because any doer of work in it,” also uses the participial form and equates the “doer of work” with the “profaner.” The word for work is the same as that used in verse 3. It means “mission,” “occupation,” or simply “labor,” that is, any labor by which one earns a living. That soul shall be cut off from among his people is quite literal. The word for soul (nefesh) simply refers emphatically to whoever, or “that person” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh). This is similar to the statement in 30.33.

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .