Deuteronomy 20:13

Summary

The verse states that Yehovah the God of the addressee will give the city into his hand, and consequently he is to strike down every male in it with the sword. The two clauses are linked by sequential verb forms, presenting the striking as the direct consequence of the divine act of handing over.

Key words

• netanah ("he will give", H5414G) — qal sequential perfect with 3rd person feminine suffix ("it/her"); continues the narrative sequence from the preceding verses, indicating this act follows logically/temporally from what precedes.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine name, subject of the giving.
• elohekha ("your God", H0430G) — construct plural noun with 2nd person masculine singular suffix, forming a construct phrase with Yehovah, "Yehovah, God of you."
• hikkita ("you will strike down", H5221) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, 2nd masculine singular; the causative stem marks an active, forceful strike, not a simple hitting.
• zekhurah ("its male", H2138) — masculine singular construct noun with 3rd feminine singular suffix ("her/its"), referring back to the city (grammatically feminine), meaning "every male belonging to it."
• lefi-charev ("to the mouth of the sword", H6310H + H2719) — construct phrase using pi ("mouth of") governing charev ("sword"), an idiom rendered by the phrase "by the edge of the sword" in many translations.

What the text says

The verse opens with a narrative vav attached to netanah, marking this clause as the continuation of a sequence begun earlier in the passage. The subject is Yehovah elohekha, a construct chain meaning "Yehovah, God of you," and the object suffix on netanah (-ah, "her/it") refers back to the city mentioned in the preceding context, since the noun for city is grammatically feminine in Hebrew. The prepositional phrase be-yadekha ("in your hand") completes this first clause: the city is given into the hand of the addressee.

The second clause begins with another narrative vav attached to hikkita, a hiphil sequential perfect that continues directly from the first verb, showing this action follows as a further step in the same sequence rather than as a separate command. The direct object marker 'et introduces kol-zekhurah, "every male of it," where the suffix -ah again points back to the feminine referent (the city/its population). The final phrase lefi-charev uses the construct noun pi ("mouth of") with charev ("sword") — an idiomatic construction where "mouth" designates the cutting edge of the blade.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening as a temporal clause, "ἕως ἂν παραδῷ" ("until he gives"), where the Hebrew uses a simple sequential netanah ("he will give") without an explicit "until." The Vulgate similarly uses "Cumque tradiderit" ("and when he has delivered"), also introducing a temporal/conditional nuance not marked as such in the Hebrew sequential form. The Hebrew idiom lefi-charev ("to the mouth of the sword") is rendered by the LXX as "ἐν φόνῳ μαχαίρας" ("in the slaughter of the sword") and by the Vulgate and modern translations as "the edge/point of the sword," each choosing a different image for the same construct phrase.