Deuteronomy 11:26

Summary

Deuteronomy 11:26 presents Moses declaring to the people that he is placing before them, on that very day, two contrasting options: a blessing and a curse. The verse functions as an introductory statement to the choice that follows in subsequent verses.

Key words

• re.'Eh ("see", H7200) — qal imperative, second person masculine singular; a direct command demanding attention before the statement that follows.
• 'a.no.Khi ("I", H0595) — independent personal pronoun, emphasizing the speaker's identity apart from the verb form that follows.
• no.Ten ("setting/giving", H5414) — qal participle, masculine singular; expresses an action presented as ongoing or immediate ("the one who is giving/setting"), rather than a completed or future act.
• be.ra.Khah ("a blessing", H1293) — feminine singular noun, without the definite article in the Hebrew, presenting the concept as a category rather than a specific pre-identified object.
• ke.la.Lah ("a curse", H7045) — feminine singular noun, paired with be.ra.Khah by the conjunction u ("and", H9002), forming the second half of the paired contrast.

What the text says

The verse opens with two words functioning together as an attention-getting device: the imperative re.'Eh ("see") followed immediately by the independent pronoun 'a.no.Khi ("I"). This construction places emphasis on the speaker before the main verb appears. The main verb, no.Ten, is not a finite past or future form but a participle — grammatically expressing an action in progress or about to unfold, which some translations render as "am setting" or "am placing." This participial form gives the statement an immediacy: the placing of the blessing and curse is presented as happening in the moment of speaking.

The phrase li-fenei-khem ("before you," built from H9005, H6440, and the suffix H9026) locates the placement spatially — literally "to the face of you (plural)" — indicating a direct, face-to-face presentation before the audience. This is followed by ha-Yom ("the day," H9009 + H3117), which anchors the action temporally to a specific day.

The two objects of the participle, be.ra.Khah ("a blessing") and ke.la.Lah ("a curse"), are both feminine singular nouns lacking the Hebrew definite article, joined by the conjunction u ("and"). Their indefinite form in Hebrew presents them as general categories or types being offered, rather than as two specific, already-defined items.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew imperative-plus-pronoun opening (re.'Eh + 'a.no.Khi) as a single interjection, ᾿Ιδοὺ ("Behold"), followed by ἐγὼ δίδωμι ("I give"), collapsing the two-word emphatic construction into a smoother Greek phrase. The LXX and Vulgate both add the definite article to "blessing" and "curse" (τὴν εὐλογίαν καὶ τὴν κατάραν; benedictionem et maledictionem), where the Hebrew nouns be.ra.Khah and ke.la.Lah appear without the article.