Deuteronomy 12:4

Summary

Deuteronomy 12:4 states a negative instruction: the addressees (plural) are told not to act "thus" toward Yehovah their God. The verse forms a prohibition contrasting with practices just described in the preceding context, without specifying here what those practices are — only that they must not be applied to Yehovah.

Key words

• lo' ("not", H3808) — the negative particle that opens the clause and governs the verb, marking this as a direct prohibition.
• ta'aSu ("you will do", H6213I) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural, expressing an action not yet to be performed or ongoing; the imperfect aspect allows a reading as general/future instruction rather than a single past event.
• n (paragogic nun, H9013) — an emphatic suffix attached to the verb form, reinforcing or intensifying the verbal expression without adding new lexical content.
• Ken ("thus", H3651C) — adverb pointing back to a manner or practice referenced earlier in the passage; it is the specific target of the negation.
• Elohei ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun in construct state, here forming a bound phrase "God of," followed by the pronominal suffix indicating whose God is meant.

What the text says

The clause is built around the negated verb ta'aSu ("you will do", H6213I), preceded by lo' ("not", H3808). The verb carries a paragogic nun (H9013), a suffix that in Biblical Hebrew often adds emphasis to the verbal form without changing its basic meaning of "you (plural) will do/act." The adverb Ken ("thus", H3651C) specifies that the prohibition concerns a particular manner of action, previously described in context, rather than introducing a new topic.

The prepositional phrase la-Yehovah Elohei-khem ("to Yehovah your God") indicates the direction or recipient of the forbidden action. The construct chain Elohei ("God", H0430G) plus the suffix khem ("your", H9026) grammatically binds "God" to "you (plural)," producing "your God" as a single possessive unit attached to the name Yehovah (H3068G).

The sentence structure is compact: negation + verb + manner adverb + indirect object (Yehovah your God). No object of the forbidden action is stated within this verse itself; the "thus" points outside this verse to actions already introduced in the surrounding text.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the paragogic nun emphasis simply as ποιήσετε ("you will do"), a plain future without any additional emphatic marker, matching the Hebrew imperfect but not reflecting the Hebrew suffix's intensifying function. The Vulgate’s facietis similarly gives a plain future without emphasis. The BSB translation interprets Ken ("thus", H3651C) contextually as "in this way" and adds the verb "worship," which is not present as a distinct lexical item in the Hebrew, Greek, or Latin texts given.