Deuteronomy 11:29

Summary

The verse announces a future action: once Yehovah brings the people into the land they are about to enter and possess, they are to place the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. It functions as a temporal/conditional clause followed by an instruction in sequential form.

Key words

• ve.ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961) — sequential perfect opening the verse, marking a future event that continues the narrative sequence begun elsewhere in the discourse.
• ki ("that/if", H3588A) — subordinating particle introducing the temporal condition ("when/if he brings you").
• ye.vi.'a.kha ("he will bring you", H0935P) — hiphil imperfect, causative form of the root meaning "to come/go" (H0935); Yehovah is the causing agent who brings the people in.
• va'-Sha.ma ("about to go there", H0935G) — qal participle of the same root as above, but here non-causative, describing the addressee as the one currently "going."
• na.ta.Tah ("you will set", H5414H) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the chain of action after the ve.ha.Yah clause: the people themselves perform the placing of blessing and curse.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a two-part temporal structure typical of Biblical Hebrew legal/narrative prose: an opening ve.ha.Yah ("and it will be") followed by ki ("when/that") sets up the condition, and the main clause is carried by a sequential perfect (na.ta.Tah, "you will set"). This creates a cause-and-effect chain: Yehovah's action of bringing the people into the land (ye.vi.'a.kha, hiphil imperfect) is the condition, and the people's action of placing the blessing and curse is the consequence, grammatically marked by the vav-sequential form continuing from the opening verb.

The text uses the same root H0935 twice with different stems: the hiphil (ye.vi.'a.kha, "he will bring you") shows Yehovah as causative agent, while the qal participle (va', "the one going") describes the people's own ongoing movement toward the land, marked additionally by the directional he on Sha.ma ("towards there"). The infinitive rish.Tah ("to take possession of it", H3423H) with the object suffix -Tah clarifies the purpose of entering the land. The two mountains, har Ge.ri.Zim and har 'Ei.val, are each in construct form ("mountain of X"), with the direct object marker 'et preceding both "the blessing" (be.ra.Khah) and "the curse" (ke.la.Lah), marking them explicitly as objects of the verb na.ta.Tah.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders na.ta.Tah ("you will set/place", H5414H) with δώσεις ("you will give"), a slightly different verbal image (giving vs. placing) though referring to the same act. The BSB renders this same verb as "proclaim," which shifts the sense toward a speech-act rather than a physical placement, a nuance not present in the Hebrew verb itself. The Vulgate's pones ("you will place/set") corresponds closely to the Hebrew na.ta.Tah. The place name 'Ei.val (Ebal) appears in the Vulgate as "Hebal" and in the LXX as Γαιβάλ (Gaibal), minor transliteration variants of the same toponym.