Deuteronomy 26:5

Summary

Deuteronomy 26:5 gives the wording that an Israelite is instructed to recite before Yehovah: a short historical confession stating that the ancestor was an Aramean, that he went down to Egypt few in number, and that there he became a great, mighty and numerous nation.

Key words

• 'arammi ("Aramean", H0761) — gentilic noun identifying the ancestor's origin, syntactically the head of the opening clause.
• 'oved ("wandering", H0006) — qal active participle, describing an ongoing state or action attached to the subject; its base sense in participial form can denote wandering/being lost.
• 'avi ("my ancestor/father", H0001+H9020) — construct noun with 1st-person suffix, "father of me."
• vayyered ("and he went down", H3381) — wayyiqtol narrative form, the first link in a chain of sequential past-tense verbs recounting the story.
• goy gadol 'atzum varav ("a nation great, mighty, and numerous") — three stacked adjectives, with the conjunction va ("and", H9002) appearing only before the last one.

What the text says

The verse opens with two sequential perfects, 'anita ("you will answer", H6030B) and 'amarta ("you will say", H0559), which continue an instruction begun earlier in the chapter: they set up direct speech to be recited "before Yehovah your God" (lifney Yehovah 'Eloheikha). The recited text itself begins with a nominal clause built from four words without an explicit copula: 'arammi + 'oved + 'avi. Because Hebrew nominal clauses do not require a linking verb, the relationship between "Aramean," the participle "wandering," and "my father/ancestor" is grammatically open — the words can be arranged as subject and predicate in more than one way, since Hebrew word order alone does not fix which noun is predicate.

After this opening clause, the text shifts into narrative mode with three wayyiqtol verbs in sequence: vayyered ("he went down," H3381), vayyagar ("he sojourned," H1481A), and vayhi ("he became," H1961). These narrate the movement to Egypt, the sojourn there "few in number" (bimtei me'at, literally "in men of fewness"), and the eventual growth into "a nation great, mighty, and numerous," where the three adjectives gadol, 'atzum, and rav are stacked with the conjunction appearing only before the final term.

Differences between versions

The opening clause shows significant divergence. The LXX renders it "Συρίαν ἀπέβαλεν ὁ πατήρ μου" ("my father rejected/abandoned Syria"), treating "Syria" as an object abandoned rather than as a description of the father. The Vulgate reads "Syrus persequebatur patrem meum" ("the Syrian was persecuting my father"), making the Syrian a separate pursuing agent rather than the father himself. The RV1909 and SBLIBRE Spanish translations follow a "perishing" sense for 'oved, rendering "a Syrian about to perish was my father," while the BSB renders it "my father was a wandering Aramean," following a "wandering" sense instead.