Deuteronomy 23:17

Summary

Deuteronomy 23:17 prohibits cultic prostitution among the people of Israel, stating separately that no "daughter of Israel" shall be a qedeshah ("female cult prostitute", H6948) and no "son of Israel" shall be a qadesh ("male cult prostitute", H6945). The verse uses parallel grammatical structure for both prohibitions.

Key words

• tihYeh ("she will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, third person feminine singular, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); expresses a durative or future prohibition rather than a simple past-tense denial.
• qedeShah ("female cult prostitute", H6948) — feminine singular adjective, functioning here as a predicate noun describing a role or status.
• miBenot ("any of the daughters of", H9006 + H1323G) — preposition min attached to a feminine plural construct noun, indicating "from among" a group.
• yihYeh ("he will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular, mirroring the feminine verb form in the first clause.
• qaDesh ("male cult prostitute", H6945) — masculine singular adjective, the male counterpart to qedeshah, built on the same root q-d-sh ("to be set apart/holy").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two parallel clauses joined by ve- ("and", H9002). Each clause follows the same pattern: negation + imperfect verb of "to be" + predicate adjective + prepositional phrase with min ("from/among") + construct plural noun ("daughters"/"sons") + "Israel". This chiastic symmetry—feminine subject/verb first, masculine subject/verb second—creates a balanced legal formula covering both sexes within the community identified as "Israel" (H3478).

Both qedeshah (H6948) and qadesh (H6945) share the root q-d-sh, the same root used for concepts of "holiness" or "consecration" elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. Here the terms designate a specific cultic role — the text does not elaborate on the nature of this role beyond identifying it as forbidden for members of Israel, male or female. The construct phrases mibbenot Yisra'el ("from the daughters of Israel") and mibbenei Yisra'el ("from the sons of Israel") specify that the prohibition applies to persons belonging to the Israelite community, using min in a partitive sense ("any one from among").

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the Hebrew terms with a doubled vocabulary: pornē ("prostitute") / porneuōn ("one who fornicates") alongside telesphoros / teliskomenos ("one who performs/undergoes a rite"), producing four clauses instead of two, where the Hebrew has only two. The Vulgate uses meretrix ("prostitute") for the feminine term and scortator ("fornicator") for the masculine term, differing from the cultic-specific sense suggested by the Hebrew root q-d-sh. The BSB translation compresses both Hebrew clauses into a single English sentence ("No daughter or son of Israel is to be a shrine prostitute"), losing the grammatical parallelism of the two separate verbs and predicate nouns present in the Hebrew.