Deuteronomy 16:15

Summary

Deuteronomy 16:15 commands a seven-day festival celebration to Yehovah at the place he chooses, grounding this celebration in the assurance that Yehovah will bless all agricultural produce and labor, resulting in complete joy.

Key words

• shiv'At ("seven", H7651) — construct form linking to yamim, forming "seven of days," the fixed duration of the festival.
• ta.Chog ("you will celebrate a festival", H2287) — qal imperfect, second person masculine, denoting an ongoing/future obligation to hold a chag (pilgrimage feast).
• yiv.Char ("he will choose", H0977) — qal imperfect describing Yehovah's ongoing prerogative to select the location, introduced by the relative particle 'asher ("which", H0834A).
• ye.va.rekh.kha ("he will bless you", H1288) — piel imperfect, intensive stem, marking the blessing as an emphasized divine action directed at "you" via the pronominal suffix.
• sa.Me.ach ("joyful", H8056) — adjective following the adverb 'akh ("surely", H0389), intensifying the description of the resulting emotional state.

What the text says

The verse opens with a construct chain, shiv'At yamim ("seven of days"), placed before the verb ta.Chog, front-loading the time frame as the topic of the sentence. The verb ta.Chog is qal imperfect, giving the sense of a repeated or standing obligation rather than a single event. The phrase ba.Makom 'asher yiv.Char Yehovah ("in the place which Yehovah will choose") uses the qal imperfect yiv.Char, leaving the location grammatically open and future-oriented — the choice is presented as an ongoing prerogative, not a fixed past decision.

The particle ki (H3588A) introduces the following clause; the grammar note lists it as either causal ("for") or conditional ("if"), and this dual function affects how the blessing clause relates to the command: it can be read as grounding the celebration in Yehovah's blessing or as making that celebration conditional upon it. The piel verb ye.va.rekh.kha intensifies the blessing action, attached directly to the second-person suffix "you." The final clause uses 'akh sameach — an adverb plus adjective — to describe the resulting state "surely joyful," a construction that names a quality rather than an ongoing process, in contrast to the earlier finite verbs.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew ki is rendered in the LXX as ἐάν δὲ ("but if"), and in Latin as an unmarked coordinating clause without an explicit causal/conditional conjunction. This shifts the logical relation of the blessing clause from potentially causal in Hebrew to explicitly conditional in the LXX. The LXX also translates yiv.Char with a subjunctive (ἐκλέξηται, "he may choose"), matching the conditional sense of ἐὰν, whereas the Hebrew imperfect yiv.Char is not marked as hypothetical.