Deuteronomy 11:13

Summary

The verse opens a conditional clause: it will happen if the people truly obey the commandments that Yehovah is giving them, with the purpose/result being love and service toward Yehovah with complete heart and being. The condition is stated with strong grammatical emphasis on the certainty or thoroughness of the obedience.

Key words

• sha.Mo.a' ("certainly [if] to obey", H8085H) — infinitive absolute paired with the following finite verb, intensifying the verbal idea of hearing/obeying.
• tish.me.'U ("you will obey", H8085H) — imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, denoting an action projected into the future or habitual obedience.
• me.tza.Veh ("commanding", H6680) — piel participle, masculine singular, presenting the command as an ongoing action performed by the speaker ("the one commanding").
• 'a.ha.Vah ("love", H0157G) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed le ("to"), expressing purpose: "in order to love."
• 'a.ve.D ("serve", H5647G) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed le ("to"), paralleling 'a.ha.Vah, expressing a second purpose: "and to serve him."

What the text says

The clause begins with ve.Hayah ("and it will be", H1961), a sequential perfect that links this verse to what precedes it, marking a narrative continuation rather than an isolated statement. The condition itself is introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A) followed by the construction sha.Mo.a' tish.me.'U — an infinitive absolute (H8085H) combined with the imperfect of the same root (H8085H). This doubling is a common Biblical Hebrew device where the infinitive absolute reinforces the finite verb, here emphasizing the thoroughness or certainty of the "obeying/hearing" action, an emphasis not always visible in translations that render it simply as "if you obey" or "if you carefully obey."

The object of this obedience is mitz.vo.Tai ("my commandments", H4687), a construct plural noun with the 1st person suffix, further specified by the relative clause 'a.Sher 'a.no.Khi me.tza.Veh 'et.Khem ha.Yom ("which I am commanding you today"). The participle me.tza.Veh (H6680, piel) frames the commanding as a continuous present action by the speaker, distinct from a completed past command.

The purpose clauses follow with two parallel infinitives construct, both governed by the preposition le ("to"): le.'a.ha.Vah ("to love", H0157G) and u.le.'a.ve.D ("and to serve", H5647G), each governing "Yehovah your God" ('et Yehovah 'e.lo.hei.Khem) and "him" ('a.ve.D-o) respectively. Both actions are further qualified by two parallel prepositional phrases using be.Khol ("with all", H3605 twice) plus construct nouns le.vav.Khem ("your heart", H3824) and naf.she.Khem ("your being", H5315G), each carrying the 2nd person plural suffix. The repetition of khol ("all") with both heart and being creates a grammatically balanced pair, expressing totality on two levels rather than a single generalized notion.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the infinitive absolute + imperfect construction (sha.Mo.a' tish.me.'U) as ἀκοῇ εἰσακούσητε, a Greek dative-noun-plus-verb construction mirroring the Hebrew emphatic doubling. The LXX also reads πάσας τὰς ἐντολὰς ("all the commandments") where the Hebrew has simply mitz.vo.Tai ("my commandments") without an explicit word for "all" at this point. The Vulgate's si...obedieritis smooths the Hebrew emphatic doubling into a single verb, not preserving the infinitive-absolute intensification. Both LXX and Vulgate render the second person plural in a form matching their base text, while some translations (e.g., BSB) explicitly add "carefully" to represent the emphatic construction.