Deuteronomy 26:3

Summary

The verse instructs the speaker to go to the officiating priest and pronounce a formal declaration: that he has entered the land which Yehovah swore to the ancestors he would give them. The sentence is built as a chain of sequential actions (arriving, speaking, declaring) leading into a quoted first-person statement.

Key words

• va.Ta ("you will go", H0935G) — qal sequential perfect; continues the narrative chain of instructions begun earlier in the passage, functioning as "and you shall go."
• yih.Yeh ("he will be", H1961) — qal imperfect inside the relative clause asher ("who", H0834A); marks the priest's office as whoever holds it at a given future time, not a specific named person.
• hi.Gad.ti ("I declare", H5046) — hiphil (causative) perfect of the root נגד; despite the perfect (completed-action) form, it functions as a performative present, i.e., the act of speaking itself constitutes the declaration.
• nish.Ba' ("he swore", H7650) — niphal perfect; this is the standard lexical form for "to swear" in Biblical Hebrew, not indicating a passive sense here.
• 'a.vo.Tei.nu ("our ancestors", H0001G) — masculine plural construct noun with 1st-person plural suffix, marking the recipients of Yehovah's earlier oath.

What the text says

The verse opens with two sequential perfects, va.Ta ("you will go") and 'a.mar.Ta ("you will say"), both continuing a chain of instructions rather than standing as independent statements — a common construction for procedural or ritual instruction in Biblical Hebrew. The priest is identified not by name but through the relative clause 'a.Sher yih.Yeh ba.Yamim ha.Hem ("who will be in those days"), using the imperfect yih.Yeh to denote whoever occupies the office at the relevant time.

The core of the speech is hi.Gad.ti ha.Yom ("I declare today"), a hiphil perfect that in this context expresses an act performed in the moment of utterance rather than a prior completed event — the declaring happens by the speaking itself. The clause ki ("that/because", H3588A) introduces the content of the declaration: arrival 'el ha.'Aretz ("into the land") that nish.Ba' Yehovah la.'avo.Teinu ("Yehovah swore to our ancestors"), closed by the infinitive La.tet La.nu ("to give to us"), expressing purpose or result of the oath.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew has the speaker address Yehovah 'elo.Heicha ("Yehovah your God") — second person, addressing God as the priest's or hearer's God. The LXX instead renders this as kyriō tō theō mou ("to the Lord my God"), first person. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew's addressee structure with "Domino Deo tuo" ("to the Lord your God"), matching the second-person form.