Deuteronomy 10:21

Summary

The verse states that Yehovah himself is the object of Israel's praise and is their God, based on the great and awesome deeds he performed for them — deeds that they personally witnessed. The sentence uses two parallel pronominal clauses followed by two relative clauses describing the acts and their eyewitness confirmation.

Key words

• hu' ("he", H1931) — repeated twice as an independent personal pronoun, giving emphatic weight to the subject before each predicate noun ("praise," "God").
• tehilatekha ("your praise", H8416) — feminine singular construct noun with 2nd person suffix; functions as predicate, identifying the referent as the content/object of praise.
• 'elohei-kha ("your God", H430) — masculine plural construct (plural form used for the divine title) with pronominal suffix, parallel in structure to tehilatekha.
• 'asah ("he has done", H6213) — qal perfect, marking a completed past action; introduces the relative clause explaining what "he" did.
• nora'ot ("awesome things", H3372) — niphal participle, feminine plural, from a root meaning "to fear"; describes deeds that produce fear/awe, functioning here as a substantive ("the feared/awesome ones").
• ra'u ("they have seen", H7200) — qal perfect, 3rd person plural, referring to "your eyes" as the grammatical subject of sight.

What the text says

The verse opens with two short nominal clauses, each built on the pattern pronoun + predicate: hu' tehilatekha ("he [is] your praise") and ve-hu' 'elohekha ("and he [is] your God"). The repetition of hu' ("he", H1931) is not required syntactically in Hebrew, which normally allows verbless clauses without an explicit pronoun; its double use highlights the subject before naming what he is in relation to the addressee.

The relative clause introduced by 'asher ("who", H834) attaches to "your God" and uses the qal perfect 'asah ("he has done", H6213) to describe completed action "with you" ('itekha). The direct objects are marked twice by 'et (H853, untranslated object marker) preceding two definite substantivized terms: ha-gedolot ("the great things", H1419, adjective functioning as noun) and ha-nora'ot ("the awesome things", H3372, niphal participle functioning as noun). The niphal form of nora'ot denotes things that produce fear or awe in those who witness them, rather than simply "great" in scale.

A second relative clause, introduced again by 'asher ("which", H834), closes the verse: ra'u 'eineikha ("your eyes have seen", H7200 + H5869), placing the dual noun "eyes" ('einei, H5869) as grammatical subject of the perfect verb "have seen," stressing direct visual witness of these deeds.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the second clause as καὶ οὗτος σου ("and he [is] yours"), omitting an explicit equivalent for 'elohekha ("your God", H430) that appears in the Hebrew and in the Vulgate's Deus tuus. For nora'ot ("awesome things", H3372), the LXX uses ἔνδοξα ("glorious"), while the Vulgate's terribilia ("terrible/fearsome things") and the Hebrew niphal participle both carry the sense of fear-inducing acts rather than glory.