Deuteronomy 14:23

Summary

The verse instructs eating a tithe portion — grain, new wine, oil, and firstborn animals — "before Yehovah" at the place he chooses for his name to dwell. The stated purpose is that the person "may learn to fear" Yehovah continually.

Key words

• 'a.khal.Ta ("you will eat", H0398) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain from the preceding legal instructions; expresses a required future action tied to what precedes.
• yiv.Char ("he will choose", H0977) — qal imperfect, marking an action not yet fixed to a single location, consistent with the phrase "the place that he will choose."
• sha.Ken ("cause to dwell", H7931) — piel infinitive, intensive stem denoting a causative action ("to cause [his name] to dwell"), governed by the preposition le ("to").
• til.Mad ("you may learn", H3925H) — qal jussive, expressing purpose/result introduced by le.Ma.'an ("so that", H4616).
• yir.'Ah ("fear", H3372H) — qal infinitive with le ("to"), forming the goal of the learning: "to fear."

What the text says

The sentence is built as a chain of construct phrases stacked after the verb 'a.khal.Ta ("you will eat", H0398): the object of eating is ma'.Sar ("tithe of", H4643), itself in construct with a series of nouns — de.ga.ne.kha ("your grain"), ti.ro.she.kha ("your new wine"), yitz.ha.Re.kha ("your fresh oil"), and then ve.kho.Rot be.ka.re.kha ve.tzo.Ne.kha ("the firstborns of your herd and your flock"). Each item is marked by a possessive suffix -kha ("your", H9021), tying the produce and animals directly to the addressee. The location is specified through a relative clause: ba.Ma.kom 'a.Sher yiv.Char ("in the place that he will choose"), where the choosing verb is imperfect, leaving the identity of the place open within the grammar itself, determined only by the deity's future action.

The purpose clause at the end, le.Ma.'an til.Mad le.yir.'Ah ("so that you may learn to fear"), uses two infinitival/jussive-type forms in sequence — first the finite jussive til.Mad ("you may learn", H3925H), then the infinitive yir.'Ah ("to fear", H3372H) as its complement. This creates a two-step goal: learning is the immediate aim, and fearing is the content of what is learned. The final phrase kol ha.ya.Mim ("all the days", H3605 + H3117K) modifies this learning as a continuous, repeated process rather than a one-time event.

Differences between versions

The LXXSWETE text supplied for this reference does not correspond to the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 14:23 given here; it instead discusses the case of the road being "too far" (a topic that appears in the following verse, 14:24, in other numbering traditions). No direct comparison of LXX wording to this Hebrew verse can therefore be made from the data provided. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) and the Hebrew align closely, rendering the construct chain as a list of ablative/accusative nouns ("decimam frumenti tui, et vini, et olei, et primogenita de armentis et ovibus tuis") and translating sha.Ken ("cause to dwell", H7931) with invocetur ("may be invoked"), which shifts the causative "dwelling" sense of the Hebrew verb toward the idea of the name being "called upon" at that place.