Deuteronomy 14:22

Summary

The verse commands the tithing of all agricultural produce, using an emphatic Hebrew verbal construction to stress the obligation. The tithe applies specifically to what grows from the "seed" and comes out of "the field," repeated annually as marked by the doubled word for "year."

Key words

• 'a.Ser ("fully ", H6237) — infinitive of the same root as the following verb, paired with it to form an emphatic construction expressing certainty or obligation.
• te.'a.Ser ("you will tithe", H6237) — piel imperfect, second person masculine; combined with the infinitive above, intensifies the command ("you shall surely tithe").
• te.vu.'At ("[the] produce of", H8393) — feminine singular construct, linking to what follows ("produce of your seed").
• zar.'E.kha ("your seed", H2233G) — masculine singular construct with pronominal suffix kha ("your"), specifying the source of the produce.
• sha.Nah ("a year", H8141) — repeated twice consecutively, a Hebrew idiom expressing distributive recurrence ("year by year," i.e., annually).

What the text says

The sentence opens with the infinitive 'a.Ser ("to tithe") immediately followed by the finite verb te.'a.Ser ("you will tithe") from the same root (H6237). This infinitive-plus-imperfect pairing is a common Biblical Hebrew construction that reinforces the verb, conveying certainty, obligation, or emphasis — often rendered in translation as "you shall surely" or "you must indeed" tithe.

The object of the tithing is introduced by the untranslated marker 'et (H0853) and specified through a chain of construct nouns: kol ("all," H3605) governs te.vu.'At ("produce of," H8393), which governs zar.'E.kha ("your seed," H2233G). This construct chain narrows the scope from "all" down to the specific produce originating from what was sown. The clause is further qualified by ha-yo.Tze' ("the one going out," H3318M), a participle with definite article describing what "comes out" of ha-sa.Deh ("the field," H7704G) — that is, what the field yields.

The final phrase, sha.Nah sha.Nah ("a year, a year," H8141 repeated), is a distributive repetition idiom indicating recurrence: "year by year" or "annually," rather than a single specified year.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate ("Decimam partem separabis de cunctis fructibus tuis qui nascuntur in terra per annos singulos") renders the doubled Hebrew verb construction as a single verb, separabis ("you will separate"), losing the emphatic infinitive-plus-imperfect structure. It also translates zar.'E.kha ("your seed") more broadly as fructibus tuis ("your fruits") and adds the phrase "in terra" ("in the land"), which has no direct counterpart in the Hebrew wording of this verse. The LXX text supplied here describes tithes of grain, wine, oil, and firstborn animals brought to a chosen place — content not present in the Hebrew of this verse, indicating the Greek text cited corresponds to different material than the Hebrew clause under analysis.