Deuteronomy 17:12

Summary

The verse describes the case of a person who acts with willful defiance by refusing to heed either the officiating priest or the judge. The consequence is stated in two sequential clauses: the person is to die, and the evil is to be removed from Israel.

Key words

za.Don ("presumption", H2087) — masculine singular noun following the preposition be ("with"), describing the manner of the action: acting "with presumption/defiance," not accidentally.

vil.Ti ("not", H1115) construct + she.Mo.a' ("to listen", H8085H) infinitive — together form the phrase "so as not to listen," expressing purpose/result of the defiant act rather than a simple negation.

'o.Med ("stands", H5975G) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the priest's ongoing function ("the one standing/serving") rather than a completed or future act.

sho.Fet ("judge", H8199) — qal participle, masculine singular, parallel in form to 'o.Med, both describing officeholders by their characteristic activity rather than by title alone.

vi.'ar.Ta ("you will remove", H1197I) — piel sequential perfect, second person masculine singular, continuing the narrative chain begun with Met ("he will die", H4191); the piel stem intensifies the sense of "burning out/clearing away" the evil.

What the text says

The sentence opens with ve.ha.'Ish 'a.Sher- ("and the person who," H0376G + H0834A), a construction that sets up the subject before its predicate is completed — a casus pendens structure common in legal formulations. The relative clause describes the offense through the imperfect verb ya.'a.Seh ("he will act", H6213A) modified by be.za.Don ("with presumption"), and the infinitive phrase le.vil.Ti she.Mo.a' specifies the result of that presumptuous action: failure to listen.

Two participles, ha.'o.Med ("the one standing", H5975G) and ha.sho.Fet ("the one judging", H8199), describe the priest and the judge respectively by their functional roles rather than as fixed titles, both governed by the same syntactic pattern (definite article + participle).

The consequence is introduced by the narrative vav (H9001) attached to two sequential perfects, u.Met ("and he will die", H4191) and u.vi.'ar.Ta ("and you will remove", H1197I). This vav-consecutive chain marks these actions as following logically/temporally from the stated offense, a hallmark of Biblical Hebrew legal and narrative prose.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a temporal qualifier to the judge not present in the Hebrew: ὃς ἂν ᾖ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ("who is in those days"). The Hebrew text has no equivalent phrase for the judge parallel to the priest's ha.'o.Med... sham ("who stands... there"). The Vulgate renders the judge's clause differently in structure, using decreto judicis ("by decree of the judge") rather than mirroring the priest's participial phrasing found in the Hebrew.