Deuteronomy 13:3

Summary

Deuteronomy 13:3 forbids heeding the words of a prophet or dreamer who leads toward other gods, explaining that Yehovah allows this test in order to reveal whether the people love Him with complete heart and being.

Key words

• tishma ("you will listen", H8085G) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular, used with the negation lo ("not", H3808) to form a prohibition; grammatically singular even though the addressees are the whole community.
• mnasseh ("putting to test", H5254G) — piel participle, expressing an ongoing, intensive action ("is testing"), not a single completed event.
• lada'at ("to know", H3045) — qal infinitive introduced by the preposition la ("to", H9005), marking purpose: the testing occurs "in order to know."
• yishkhem ("[are there] for you", H3426 + H9046) — existential particle with 2nd person plural suffix, combined with the interrogative ha (H9008), forming the embedded question "is there for you...".
• 'ohavim ("loving ones", H0157G) — qal participle masculine plural, functioning as a predicate: "[you being] loving ones of Yehovah your God."

What the text says

The verse opens with a prohibition built from lo + the imperfect tishma, followed by the preposition 'el ("to", H0413) governing two construct phrases: divrei ha-navi ha-hu ("the words of that prophet") and cholem ha-chalom ha-hu ("the dreamer of that dream"). Both objects are marked as definite through the repeated article ha (H9009) and the distal pronoun hu ("that", H1931), pointing specifically to the prophet or dreamer just described in the surrounding context.

The causal particle ki (H3588A) introduces the explanatory clause, where the piel participle mnasseh presents Yehovah's testing as a continuous action rather than a one-time event. The purpose of this testing is expressed through the infinitive construction lada'at ("to know"), followed by an embedded question formed with the interrogative ha attached to the existential yishkhem ("is there for you") plus the participle 'ohavim ("loving ones"). Literally, the question reads "whether there exist for you [ones] loving Yehovah your God," a periphrastic way of asking "whether you love." The phrase concludes with be-khol levavkhem u-ve-khol nafshekhem ("with all your heart and with all your being"), each noun in construct with the plural suffix -khem ("your", H9026), reinforcing totality of the human interior faculties addressed.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening prohibition as a future indicative, ouk akousesthe ("you will not hear"), rather than reproducing the Hebrew's singular imperfect form directly. Within the same LXX sentence, kyrios ho theos sou uses the singular "your" while the following hymas ("you," plural) switches to plural, mirroring the Hebrew's own mixed address pattern (singular verb tishma, plural suffixes -khem). The Vulgate expands the embedded question by adding an non ("or not"), an explicit disjunction not present in the Hebrew's interrogative ha-yishkhem or in the LXX's ei agapate. Among modern renderings, SBLIBRE uses a third-person plural verb ("escucharán," they will not listen) where BSB and RV1909 preserve a second-person address ("you must not listen," "no darás oído"), reflecting different resolutions of the Hebrew's singular-form verb applied to a collective audience.