Deuteronomy 21:10

Summary

Deuteronomy 21:10 opens a legal case (a casuistic "if/when" clause) describing the scenario of going out to war against enemies, receiving them into one's hand through the action of Yehovah, and taking captives. The verse sets the conditions for the law that follows in the subsequent verses.

Key words

• ki ("if", H3588A) — conditional particle that introduces the entire legal scenario as a hypothetical/case-law situation ("when/if this happens...").
• te.Tze' ("you will go out", H3318G) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, marking the initial action as future/ongoing, addressed to an individual Israelite.
• ne.ta.N-o ("he will give him", H5414G + H9033) — qal sequential perfect with third person suffix; the sequential perfect continues the narrative chain begun by the imperfect, and the suffix -o ("him") refers back collectively to "your enemies."
• Yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine name, grammatical subject of the giving action; the one who delivers the enemies into the hand.
• sha.Vi.ta ("you will take captive", H7617) — qal sequential perfect, second person masculine singular, continuing the chain of actions performed by the addressee after Yehovah's action.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of verbal forms typical of Biblical Hebrew case law (casuistic legal style). It begins with the conditional particle ki ("if", H3588A) followed by an imperfect verb te.Tze' ("you will go out", H3318G), which sets up the initial hypothetical condition — going out to war. The narrative then shifts to two sequential perfect verbs, ne.ta.N-o ("he will give him", H5414G) and sha.Vi.ta ("you will take captive", H7617), both of which grammatically continue the action initiated by the imperfect. This imperfect-plus-sequential-perfect pattern is common in Hebrew for describing a sequence of future or hypothetical events tied together as one continuous scenario.

The grammatical subject of the giving action is Yehovah 'e.lo.Hei-kha ("your God", H0430G with second person suffix), constructed in a construct relationship ("God of you"). The object pronoun -o ("him", H9033) attached to ne.ta.N refers back to the collective enemies mentioned earlier as 'o.ye.Vei-kha ("your enemies", H0341), a plural construct participle functioning as a noun ("the ones being hostile to you"). The final clause uses shiv.Y-o ("his captive[s]", H7628A), a construct noun with a third person suffix, referring to the captives taken from the defeated party.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Yehovah as Kyrios ("Lord") and 'elohim as ho theos ("the God"), following its standard practice of substituting the divine name with a title. The Vulgate follows a similar pattern, using Dominus Deus tuus ("the Lord your God"). The Hebrew construct chain shiv.Y-o ("his captive[s]") is rendered in the LXX as tēn pronomēn autōn ("their plunder/captivity"), shifting the pronominal reference from singular "his" (referring back to the enemy collectively) to plural "their," reflecting a difference in how the collective enemies are grammatically treated between the two languages.