Deuteronomy 17:13

Summary

Deuteronomy 17:13 describes the expected effect on the general population after witnessing the execution of a rebellious judge or false prophet (context from the preceding verses): the people will hear about it, respond with fear, and stop acting with presumptuous arrogance. The verse is built as three sequential verbal actions describing a chain of cause and effect.

Key words

• khol ("all", H3605) — construct noun linking to ha'am, forming "all of the people," emphasizing the totality of the population affected, not just a subset.
• ha'am ("the people", H5971A) — definite singular collective noun functioning as the subject of all three verbs that follow.
• yishme'u ("they will hear", H8085G) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; expresses a future or ongoing action of hearing/perceiving.
• yira'u ("they may fear", H3372G) — qal imperfect joined by the conjunction ve, continuing the sequence begun by hearing; the fear is presented as following from the hearing.
• yezidun ("they will act presumptuously", H2102) — hiphil (causative) imperfect with a paragogic nun attached, which adds emphasis to the verb form; the hiphil stem indicates the people themselves are causing or bringing about this arrogant behavior, which the sentence negates with lo ("not", H3808).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure places khol ha'am ("all the people") once at the beginning as the subject governing three consecutive imperfect verbs joined by the conjunction ve ("and"): yishme'u ("they will hear"), yira'u ("they will fear"), and yezidun ("they will act presumptuously"), the last negated by lo. This creates a chain: hearing leads to fearing, which leads to the absence of presumptuous action. The final verb yezidun carries a paragogic nun, a grammatical feature that adds emphatic weight to the verb without changing its basic meaning. The word od ("again", H5750) closes the verse, indicating that the presumptuous behavior being negated is something that will not recur, implying it had occurred before.

Differences between versions

The LXX restructures the sequence by turning "hearing" into an aorist participle (ἀκούσας, "having heard") subordinate to the main verb φοβηθήσεται ("will fear"), rather than presenting hearing and fearing as two coordinate imperfects as in the Hebrew. The Vulgate follows a similar pattern with audiens timebit ("hearing, he will fear"). For the third verb, the LXX uses ἀσεήσει ("will act impiously/ungodly"), which carries a religious connotation, where the Hebrew yezidun (H2102) denotes acting with insolence or presumption without a specifically religious frame. The Vulgate renders this clause as a purpose statement, ut nullus deinceps intumescat superbia ("so that no one may henceforth swell with pride"), converting the Hebrew's simple negated future into an explicit purpose clause.