Deuteronomy 26:2

Summary

The verse instructs the Israelite to take a portion of the first agricultural produce from his land, place it in a basket, and travel to the location that Yehovah will designate as the site where his name will dwell. The sentence is built as a chain of sequential actions using consecutive perfect verb forms.

Key words

• re'shit ("first of", H7225) — construct noun marking the produce as "the first of all the fruit," singling out a portion rather than the whole harvest.
• ha'adamah ("ground", H0127) — definite feminine noun referring to the soil/land itself, distinct from 'artzekha ("your land") used later in the verse for the possessed territory.
• teneh ("basket", H2935) — a concrete object noun naming the container into which the produce is placed.
• yivchar ("he will choose", H0977) — qal imperfect, marking a future/contingent divine action: the choosing of the place is not yet fixed at the time of speaking.
• shaken ("to cause to dwell", H7931) — piel infinitive, a causative form indicating an active "causing to dwell" of the name, distinct from a passive or invocational sense.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative ve- ("and") attached to laqachta ("you will take", H3947), a sequential perfect that continues the instructional chain from the previous verse. This pattern repeats three times — ve-lakachta ("and you will take"), ve-samta ("and you will put", H7760), ve-halakhta ("and you will go", H1980) — producing a procedural sequence: take, put, go. Each verb is qal and marked for second-person masculine singular, addressing a single individual representing the community.

The object of the taking is specified through a chain of construct nouns: reshit ("first of") kol ("all of", H3605) peri ("fruit of", H6529) ha'adamah ("the ground"). This nested construct chain narrows the object from "all fruit" down to "the first of the fruit of the ground." A relative clause with 'asher ("which", H0834A) then specifies that this ground is me'artzekha ("from your land", H0776), itself qualified by a second 'asher clause identifying the land as what Yehovah "is giving" (noten, participle H5414), expressing an ongoing or imminent action rather than a completed one.

The destination clause uses 'asher yivchar ("which he will choose") — an imperfect verb expressing a future, not-yet-determined divine selection — followed by the infinitive lesaken shemo sham ("to cause his name to dwell there"), a piel causative construction.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders "τῆς γῆς σου" ("your land") where the Hebrew separates two distinct terms, ha'adamah ("the ground") and 'artzekha ("your land"), collapsing the double relative-clause structure into a single phrase. For lesaken shemo ("to cause his name to dwell"), the LXX has epiklēthēnai to onoma autou ("that his name be called upon") and the Vulgate has ut ibi invocetur nomen ejus ("that his name be invoked there") — both versions use an invocational sense where the Hebrew uses the causative-dwelling verb shaken (H7931).