Deuteronomy 13:10

Summary

Deuteronomy 13:10 commands that the person previously described (who incited others toward other gods) be stoned to death. The verse grounds this penalty in the fact that he sought to "thrust aside" the addressee from Yehovah, the God who brought him out of Egypt, "a house of slaves."

Key words

• se.kal.T ("you will stone", H5619) — qal sequential perfect, second person masculine; continues the narrative chain of consequences begun earlier in the passage, functioning here as a command ("you shall stone").
• vi.Kesh ("he sought", H1245) — piel perfect, intensive stem; marks completed, deliberate action, contrasting with the simple qal forms used for the addressee's actions.
• ha.di.cha. ("thrust aside", H5080) — hiphil infinitive, causative; expresses the purpose/result of the seeking — causing someone else to turn away, not merely turning away oneself.
• mo.tzi.'a. ("brought out", H3318H) — hiphil participle construct; a descriptive title for Yehovah, "the one bringing out," used as an ongoing characterization rather than a simple past-tense verb.
• 'e.lo.Hei. ("God", H0430G) — construct plural noun, "God of," syntactically bound to the following pronominal suffix "your."

What the text says

The verse opens with two sequential perfect verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001): se.kal.T ("you will stone") and Met ("he will die"). This construction presents the stoning and death as a continuous sequence of action rather than two separate commands — the sequential perfect form ties this clause to what precedes it in the passage, functioning within a chain of instructions.

The causal particle ki ("for", H3588A) introduces the reason for the penalty: vi.Kesh ("he sought"), a piel perfect verb. The piel stem here conveys intensity or deliberateness in the seeking. This seeking has an infinitival purpose clause: le-ha.di.cha.-kha ("to thrust aside you"), a hiphil infinitive construct with a pronominal suffix. The hiphil form is causative — the person's guilt lies not in personally departing from Yehovah, but in causing (or attempting to cause) the addressee to depart, expressed by the preposition combination me-'al ("from upon/from with", H9006 + H5921A).

Following this, Yehovah is identified through a construct chain: Yehovah 'e.lo.Hei.kha ("Yehovah your God"), further modified by the participial phrase ha-mo.tzi.'a.kha ("the one bringing you out"). The participle form (rather than a finite past verb) presents this as an characterizing title of Yehovah — "the bringer-out" — attached to the descriptions "from the land of Egypt" and "from a house of slaves," the latter using construct noun chains (Beit 'a.va.Dim, "house of slaves").

Differences between versions

The LXX renders le-ha.di.cha.kha ("to thrust aside you") with ἀποστῆσαί σε ("to make you depart"), a comparable causative sense. The Vulgate uses abstrahere ("to drag away"), a stronger physical image than the Hebrew hiphil, which more literally conveys "causing to turn/thrust aside." The BSB and RV1909 both render bikkesh ("he sought") with "trying/procuró," matching the piel's sense of deliberate effort, while SBLIBRE's "ha tratado" similarly conveys ongoing attempt rather than a single completed act.