Deuteronomy 27:18

Summary

This verse is one of a series of ritual curses pronounced in Deuteronomy 27. It declares cursed anyone who causes a blind person to go astray on the road, and specifies that the whole assembly responds with "amen" as a formal act of agreement.

Key words

• 'a.Rur ("cursed", H0779) — Qal passive participle, masculine singular. It functions as a declarative formula opening the sentence, marking the subject as the recipient of a curse-state rather than describing an action.
• mash.Geh ("one who leads astray", H7686) — Hiphil participle, masculine singular. The Hiphil stem is causative: the form does not mean "one who strays" but "one who causes [another] to stray," identifying the agent responsible for the blind person's misdirection.
• 'i.Ver ("a blind [person]", H5787) — Adjective, masculine singular, functioning here as a substantive (the direct object of the causing-to-stray). It names the vulnerable party affected by the action.
• 'a.Mar ("it will say", H0559) — Qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), third person. This verb form continues the narrative sequence begun by the preceding curse formula, moving the text from declaration to communal response.
• 'a.Men ("amen", H0543) — Interjection. It closes the verse as the fixed liturgical reply confirming the curse just pronounced.

What the text says

The verse opens with 'a.Rur (H0779), a passive participle that functions independently as a curse-declaration, without a separate copula verb — a construction typical of this list-formula in Deuteronomy 27. The grammatical subject of the curse is the participle mash.Geh (H7686), built on the Hiphil (causative) stem of the root meaning "to stray" (H7686). This causative form is the crux of the sentence: it does not curse someone who is himself lost, but someone who actively causes a blind person, 'i.Ver (H5787), to lose the way, marked by the prepositional phrase ba.Da.rekh ("on the way/road", H1870K with H9003).

The second half of the verse shifts from the timeless curse-formula to a narrated sequence using the vav-consecutive perfect 'a.Mar (H0559), literally continuing "and it will say/happen that." The subject is kol-ha.'Am ("all the people", H3605 construct + H9009 + H5971A), a construct phrase meaning "the totality of the people." Their spoken response is the single interjection 'a.Men (H0543), a fixed liturgical term of ratification, grammatically unconnected to the preceding clause except by the narrative vav.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the curse formula with a future indicative, ἐροῦσιν ("they will say"), plural, matching the collective subject πᾶς ὁ λαός ("all the people"). The Vulgate uses dicet ("he/it will say"), singular, treating omnis populus as a grammatically singular collective noun, consistent with Latin usage even though the referent is plural. For the closing word, the LXX has Γένοιτο ("may it be/so be it"), an optative expressing a wish, while the Vulgate and the Hebrew both preserve the transliterated/borrowed term Amen (H0543) as a fixed formula rather than translating its sense.