Deuteronomy 17

## Summary Deuteronomy 17 combines cultic and judicial regulations: prohibiting blemished sacrifices, prescribing the death penalty for idolatry established on multiple testimony, delegating difficult legal cases to a central priestly/judicial authority, and setting limits on a future king's power and possessions. ## Key words - *tiz.Bach* ("you will sacrifice", H2076) — qal imperfect, expressing an ongoing prohibition against future sacrificial practice. - *to.'e.Vah* ("abomination", H8441) — feminine singular noun used twice (v.1, v.4) to frame both blemished offerings and idolatry as the same category of act. - *yi.pa.Le'* ("it will be [too] difficult", H6381) — niphal imperfect describing a case that exceeds local judicial capacity, triggering the appeal to the central place. - *yiv.Char* ("he will choose", H0977) — qal imperfect referring to Yahweh's selection, applied both to "the place" (vv.8,10) and "the king" (v.15), linking cultic centralization and kingship under the same verb. - *yar.beh* ("he will increase", H7235A) — hiphil imperfect repeated three times in vv.16-17 for horses, wives, and silver/gold, forming the triple restriction on royal accumulation. ## What the text says The chapter opens with a sacrificial law (v.1) using the construct chain *to.'a.Vat Yahweh 'e.lo.Hei.kha* ("abomination of Yahweh your God") to classify a blemished offering, then pivots (v.2) with *ki* ("if", H3588A) into a case-law structure common in Deuteronomic legislation: a conditional protasis describing an offense (worship of *'E.lo.Him 'a.che.Rim*, "other gods", H0430J/H0312) followed by procedural apodoses. The narrative-vav sequential perfects (*va.yi.gad*, *va.hotze'ta*, *u.sekalta*) chain the required steps — report, investigation, verdict, and execution — into a single legal procedure rather than isolated commands. The requirement of "two or three witnesses" (v.6) uses the construct phrase *pi shenayim 'edim* ("mouth of two witnesses", H6310I) idiomatically for testimony, and the same construct governs the transfer of the case to priests and judge at the chosen place when a matter *yi.pa.Le'* ("is too difficult", H6381) for local resolution (v.8). The royal law (vv.14-20) is introduced by the same conditional *ki* structure used for the idolatry case, syntactically presenting kingship as a hypothetical future scenario rather than a mandate. The king must come *mi.Kerev 'a.Chei.kha* ("from the midst of your countrymen", H0251I), explicitly excluding a *'ish nokh.ri* ("foreign man", H5237). Three restrictions use the same hiphil verb *yar.beh* ("he will increase") for horses, wives, and silver/gold, forming a parallel structure of limitation on royal power, followed by the requirement to copy and read the *to.Rah* ("instruction/law", H8451) "all the days of his life" (v.19). ## Differences between versions In v.6 the Hebrew *'e.Chad* ("one", H0259) is grammatically feminine singular describing "witness," while the BSB renders it "a lone witness" — a translation choice not marked by gender in English. In v.16, the Hebrew *Sus* ("horse", H5483M) singular is rendered by the LXX with ἵππον (singular) but the Vulgate uses "equos" (plural, "horses"), reflecting a numeric divergence in how the horse-accumulation prohibition is expressed. In v.1 the Hebrew lists *Shor* ("ox", H7794) then *Seh* ("sheep", H7716), while the LXX order is μόσχον ("calf/young bull") ἢ πρόβατον ("sheep"), showing a lexical shift from "ox" to "young bull" not present in the Hebrew or Vulgate ("ovem, et bovem").