Deuteronomy 13:12

Summary

This verse opens a conditional clause: "If you hear, concerning one of your cities that Yehovah your God is giving you to dwell in, [it being] said..." It introduces a report about one of the cities given by Yehovah, setting up what follows (the content of what is "said" appears in subsequent verses).

Key words

• ki ("if", H3588A) — subordinating particle opening the conditional sentence; the entire verse depends grammatically on this word.
• tishma' ("you will hear", H8085G) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular; expresses a future/ongoing possibility of hearing, the main verb of the protasis.
• noten ("[is] about to give", H5414G) — qal participle; describes Yehovah's giving of the cities as an ongoing or characteristic action, not a completed past event.
• lashevet ("to dwell", H3427) — infinitive with prefixed preposition le-, expressing purpose: the cities are given "in order to dwell" there.
• le'mor ("saying", H0559) — infinitive with prefixed preposition le-, a standard formula introducing reported speech; it signals that what follows in the next verse(s) is the content heard.

What the text says

The verse is built as a single extended conditional sentence. The particle ki ("if", H3588A) governs the verb tishma' ("you will hear", H8085G), a qal imperfect that frames the entire clause as a hypothetical or recurring situation addressed to a singular "you." The object of hearing is specified through a construct chain: be'achat 'areikha ("in one of your cities", H0259 + H5892B + H9021), meaning one city among the addressee's cities.

This city is further qualified by a relative clause introduced by asher ("which", H0834A): "which Yehovah your God is giving to you to dwell there." Here noten ("[is] about to give", H5414G) is a participle, not a finite past-tense verb, which in Biblical Hebrew often conveys an action presented as ongoing, characteristic, or about to occur — matching English renderings like "is giving." The purpose of this giving is expressed by the infinitive lashevet ("to dwell", H3427) followed by the adverb sham ("there", H8033G).

The verse closes with le'mor ("saying", H0559), an infinitive construction that functions as a formulaic bridge introducing direct or reported speech. The content of what is "said" is not contained in this verse itself but is introduced by this final word, meaning the clause is grammatically incomplete without the material that follows.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the participle noten with a present-tense finite verb, didōsin ("gives"), rather than a participial construction, slightly shifting the grammatical aspect toward a simple present rather than an ongoing/participial nuance. The Vulgate uses a future finite verb, dabit ("will give"), which frames the giving as a future event rather than the present-participial sense of the Hebrew.