Deuteronomy 12:28

Summary

The verse commands careful obedience to "all these words" that Moshe is transmitting, framing this obedience as the condition for lasting well-being for the addressee and his descendants. The concluding clause defines that obedience specifically as doing "the good and the right" as measured "in the eyes of Yehovah your God."

Key words

• shemor ("take care", H8104J) — qal imperative, opening the verse with a direct command form.
• sha'ma'ta ("you will hear", H8085H) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the imperative's force as an ongoing command rather than a separate future action.
• metzavveh ("commanding", H6680) — piel participle in construct with the suffix -kha ("you"), presenting the commanding as a continuous, present action ("I am commanding you") rather than a completed past event.
• yitav ("it may go well", H3190) — qal jussive, expressing a wished-for or purposed outcome following lema'an ("so that", H4616).
• ta'aseh ("you will do", H6213A) — qal imperfect, marking incomplete/future or habitual action, linked by ki ("for", H3588A) to the preceding purpose clause.

What the text says

The sentence opens with two verbs in sequence, shemor ("take care", H8104J) followed by sha'ma'ta ("you will hear", H8085H). The first is a plain imperative; the second, though morphologically a perfect, functions as a sequential form continuing the imperative's command force — the Hebrew grammar links "guarding" and "hearing/obeying" as one continuous action rather than two distinct acts. The object of this combined command is kol-ha-devarim ha-'elleh ("all these words", H3605/H1697G/H0428), further specified by the relative clause 'asher 'anokhi metzavveka ("which I am commanding you") — the participle metzavveh (H6680) presents the speaker as commanding in the present, ongoing moment of speech.

The purpose clause introduced by lema'an ("so that", H4616) uses the jussive yitav ("it may go well", H3190) to express the intended result: prolonged well-being "for you and your children after you, until perpetuity" ('ad-'olam, H5769G). The final clause, introduced by ki ("for", H3588A), uses the imperfect ta'aseh ("you will do", H6213A) to state the condition under which that well-being occurs: doing "the good" (ha-tov, H2896A) and "the right" (ha-yashar, H3477G) "in the eyes of Yehovah your God" (be'einei Yehovah 'Eloheikha) — an idiom locating the standard of judgment specifically with Yehovah's perspective, expressed through the construct noun 'einei ("eyes of", H5869H).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening two Hebrew verbs as three Greek verbs — Phylassou ("guard"), akoue ("hear"), and poieseis ("you shall do") — adding an explicit "you shall do" not present as a separate verb in the Hebrew's two-verb chain. The Vulgate matches the Hebrew's two-verb structure with Observa et audi ("observe and hear"). Where the Hebrew states the standard as be'einei Yehovah ("in the eyes of Yehovah"), the LXX uses enantion kyriou ("before the Lord"), a different idiom for the same standard; the Vulgate's in conspectu Domini ("in the sight of the Lord") stays closer to the "sight/eyes" image of the Hebrew.