Deuteronomy 27:19

Summary

The verse pronounces a curse on anyone who diverts or perverts the justice due to a sojourner, a fatherless person, or a widow. The people respond collectively by affirming this curse with the word "amen."

Key words

• 'a.Rur ("[is] cursed", H0779) — qal passive participle, masculine singular; functions as a fixed formulaic opening, naming a state imposed on the subject rather than describing an action being performed.
• ma.Teh ("[one who] turns aside", H5186) — hiphil participle, masculine singular; the causative stem indicates the subject actively causes something to bend or divert, here applied to justice itself.
• mish.Pat ("[the] justice of", H4941H) — masculine singular construct noun; grammatically bound to the following nouns (ger, yatom, 'almanah), forming the phrase "the justice of the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow."
• ger ("a sojourner", H1616) — masculine singular noun; the first of three vulnerable categories named as possessors of the justice being diverted.
• 'a.Mar ("it will say", H0559) — qal sequential perfect, third person; continues the narrative sequence, marking the people's collective verbal response as the next event following the curse formula.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with 'a.Rur ("[is] cursed", H0779), a passive participle that functions independently as a curse-formula, without an explicit verb "to be" — this is typical of Hebrew formulaic pronouncements. The subject of the curse is identified through the participle ma.Teh ("[one who] turns aside", H5186), in the hiphil stem, meaning the subject is one who causes deflection or distortion — here, of mish.Pat ("[the] justice of", H4941H). This noun is in construct form, chaining together three beneficiaries of justice: ger ("a sojourner", H1616), ya.Tom ("a fatherless one", H3490), and 'al.ma.Nah ("a widow", H0490), joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002). The construct chain presents these three as a single grammatical unit — "the justice of [the] sojourner-fatherless-and-widow" — rather than three separate legal cases.

The second half of the verse shifts to narrative structure using the sequential perfect 'a.Mar ("it will say", H0559), introduced by the narrative vav (H9001), which links this clause to the preceding curse as its consequence or continuation. The subject is kol-ha-'Am ("all the people"), a construct phrase meaning "all of the people," followed by the interjection 'a.Men ("amen", H0543), marking the people's spoken ratification of the curse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ma.Teh ("[one who] turns aside") with a relative clause (ὃς ἂν ἐκκλίνῃ, "whoever turns aside"), making explicit a conditional structure that the Hebrew participle expresses more compactly. The Vulgate's pervertit ("perverts") and the BSB's "withholds" both interpret the same verb ma.Teh with slightly different semantic emphasis — turning aside versus withholding — though the Hebrew verb itself denotes causing deviation or bending.