Deuteronomy 27:10

Summary

Deuteronomy 27:10 issues a directive to Israel: to listen to the voice of Yehovah their God and to carry out his commandments and statutes, which Moses states he is commanding them "this day." The verse closes a section (marked by the samekh paragraph marker after it) tied to the covenant renewal ceremony at Mount Ebal.

Key words

• Sha.ma'.ta ("you will listen", H8085H) — qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine singular; continues a narrative chain, giving the sense of an action following logically/temporally from what precedes.
• Kol ("[the] voice of", H6963A) — masculine singular construct noun, linking "voice" directly to the following divine name in a possessive relationship ("voice of Yehovah").
• 'a.Si.ta ("you will do", H6213A) — qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine singular; parallels Sha.ma'.ta in form, pairing "listening" with "doing" as two sequential acts.
• me.tza.ve. ("[am] commanding", H6680) — piel participle, masculine singular construct; the piel stem intensifies the action of commanding, and the participle marks it as an ongoing, present act ("the one commanding").
• 'a.no.Khi ("I", H0595) — independent personal pronoun; its presence alongside the participle me.tza.ve. makes the subject ("I") explicit and emphatic, though Hebrew verbs already encode person.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel sequential perfect verbs, Sha.ma'.ta ("you will listen") and 'a.Si.ta ("you will do"), both second person masculine singular, continuing a narrative chain begun earlier in the passage. This grammatical pairing links "listening to the voice" and "doing the commandments" as two connected actions in sequence, not necessarily as options.

The object of listening is Kol ("voice of") Yehovah 'e.lo.Hei. ("God") plus the suffix kha ("your"), forming the construct chain "voice of Yehovah your God." The object of doing is introduced twice with the object marker 'et- (H0853, untranslated), first for mitz.vo.Ta ("commandments") with the suffix v ("his"), then for chu.Ka ("statutes") with its own suffix v ("his"), joined by the conjunction ve. ("and"). Both nouns are plural constructs bound to "his," referring back to Yehovah.

The relative clause 'a.Sher ("which") introduces a further qualification: 'a.no.Khi ("I") me.tza.ve. ("commanding," piel participle) Kha ("you"), specifying that the commandments and statutes are what Moses is presently, actively commanding, closing with hai. Yom ("this day").

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chu.Ka ("statutes", H2706G) as δικαιώματα ("righteous decrees/ordinances"), a term carrying a slightly different semantic range than the Hebrew "statutes." The Vulgate uses justitias ("justices"), similarly shifting the sense toward "righteous acts" rather than the more neutral "statutes" of the Hebrew. The Vulgate also omits an explicit rendering of Kol ("voice of") as a separate lexeme, compressing "voice of Yehovah your God" into "his voice" (vocem ejus), where the referent "his" depends on the preceding verse rather than repeating the divine name directly in this clause.