Deuteronomy 23:21

Summary

The verse instructs that when a person makes a vow to Yehovah, its fulfillment must not be delayed, because Yehovah will surely demand its payment, and failure to pay results in sin being counted against the person.

Key words

• neder ("a vow", H5088) — masculine singular noun, the object formally vowed, paired with the cognate verb tiDor ("you will vow", H5087) in a verb-object construction typical of Hebrew legal/cultic language.
• te'aCher ("you will delay", H0309) — piel imperfect, giving intensive or extended force to the idea of delay, negated by lo' ("not", H3808) to form a prohibition.
• daRosh yidreShennu ("certainly he will require it", H1875 + H1875) — infinitive absolute followed by the finite qal imperfect of the same root, a construction that intensifies certainty of the action ("he will surely require").
• me'iMakh ("from with you", H5973B + H9031) — compound preposition with pronominal suffix, marking the source from which the debt (the vow) is exacted.
• chet' ("sin", H2399) — masculine singular noun, the stated consequence attached to the second clause via ve ("and", H9001) + hayah ("it will be", H1961).

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel clauses, each introduced by ki ("if/for", H3588A). The first clause states the condition: ki tiDor neder la-Yehovah 'eloheikha ("if you vow a vow to Yehovah your God"). Here the verb tiDor and the noun neder share the same root (H5087/H5088), a common Hebrew pattern where a verb and its cognate noun reinforce each other, underscoring the formal act of vowing rather than merely describing it in passing.

The prohibition that follows, lo' te'aCher le-shalle-mo ("you will not delay to pay it"), uses the piel stem of 'achar (H0309), which intensifies the notion of delay, combined with the infinitive shalem ("to pay", H7999A) plus the third-person suffix -o ("it", H9033) referring back to the vow.

The second ki clause gives the reason for the prohibition: daRosh yidreShennu Yehovah 'eloheikha me'imakh ("Yehovah your God will surely require it from you"). The infinitive absolute daRosh placed before the finite verb yidreShennu (both from H1875) is a grammatical device that emphasizes certainty — the finite verb alone would state the action, but the paired infinitive absolute stresses that this requiring will definitely occur.

The sentence concludes with a sequential perfect, ve-hayah bekha chet' ("and it will be sin in you" / "there will be sin in you"), continuing the narrative logic set up by the preceding vav (H9001): non-payment results in chet' (H2399) being attributed to the person.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ki tiDor neder as "ἐὰν... εὔξῃ εὐχὴν" ("if you vow a vow"), preserving the cognate verb-noun pairing similarly to the Hebrew. For the emphatic infinitive absolute construction daRosh yidreShennu, the LXX uses "ἐκζητῶν ἐκζητήσει" (participle + future verb), a Greek device likewise doubling the root to render the emphasis. The Vulgate simplifies this doubled construction to a single verb, "requiret illud" ("he will require it"), without a corresponding intensifying repetition. The Vulgate also adds a conditional clause not marked in the same way in the Hebrew: "et si moratus fueris, reputabitur tibi in peccatum" ("and if you have delayed, it will be reckoned to you as sin"), making explicit a conditional nuance that the Hebrew ve-hayah bekha chet' states as a direct sequential consequence rather than a separate hypothetical.