Deuteronomy 18:11

Summary

This verse continues a list of forbidden divinatory practices, naming four types of practitioners: one who casts a spell, one who consults a necromancer, one who has a familiar spirit, and one who seeks out the dead. The verse is structured as a series of participial phrases connected by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002).

Key words

• choVer ("[one who] casts", H2266) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing an agent who performs the action of binding/casting habitually.
• Chaver ("a spell", H2267) — masculine singular noun, the object of the casting, forming a cognate pair with choVer (verb and noun from the same root).
• sho'El ("[one who] consults", H7592) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the agent who asks or inquires.
• 'Ov ("a necromancer", H0178) — masculine singular noun, the entity or figure consulted.
• doResh ("[one who] enquires", H1875) — qal participle, masculine singular, paired with the preposition 'el ("to", H0413) and hameTim ("the dead", H4191, participle plural used as a noun) to form the phrase "one who enquires to the dead."

What the text says

The verse is built entirely from participial constructions, each introduced by the conjunction ve. Hebrew participles function as agent-nouns ("the one doing X"), so each phrase names a category of person defined by a repeated action rather than a single occurrence. The first pair, choVer chaver, uses a verb and a noun from the same root (H2266/H2267), a construction sometimes called a cognate accusative, which in this case emphasizes the specific act of "casting a spell" as its own defined activity.

The next two items, sho'El 'Ov ("consults a necromancer") and yide'oNi ("a familiar spirit", H3049), name the object consulted rather than describing the act with a verb-noun pair. yide'oNi stands alone as a masculine singular noun without its own participle, though it is grammatically dependent on the surrounding list, sharing the general sense of consultation implied by sho'El.

The final item, doResh 'el-hameTim, differs structurally: here hameTim ("the dead") is itself a qal participle (plural, from the same participial pattern as the others) used substantively as "the dead ones." The preposition 'el ("to", H0413) links the action of doResh ("enquires") directly to this object, so the phrase reads literally "one who enquires to the dead."

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (LXX) renders the list with terms such as ἐπαείδων ἐπαοιδήν ("one chanting a chant"), ἐνγαστρίμυθος ("belly-talker/ventriloquist"), and τερατοσκόπος ("observer of portents"), which do not map one-to-one onto the Hebrew terms 'Ov and yide'oNi; the LXX appears to interpret these practices through Greek categories of divination rather than transliterating them. The Vulgate uses pythones ("pythons", a term associated with the oracle at Delphi) for 'Ov, and divinos ("diviners") for yide'oNi, again substituting culturally specific Latin/Greek concepts for the Hebrew terms. The Hebrew itself does not specify the mechanism of these practices beyond the participial designations of the practitioners.