Deuteronomy 27:23

Summary

Deuteronomy 27:23 pronounces a curse on the man who lies with his mother-in-law, as part of a series of ritual curses recited before the assembled people. The verse closes with the fixed liturgical formula in which the entire people responds amen.

Key words

• 'a.Rur ("cursed", H0779) — qal passive participle, masculine singular, opening formula shared by the entire curse series in this chapter.
• sho.Khev ("one who lies", H7901I) — qal participle, masculine singular, functioning as the subject of the curse: "the one lying" with the mother-in-law.
• cho.tan.T ("mother-in-law", H2859A) with suffix o ("his", H9023) — feminine singular construct participle plus pronominal suffix, together meaning "his mother-in-law."
• 'a.Mar ("it will say", H0559) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the vav (H9001), indicating the people's response follows automatically after the curse.
• 'a.Men ("amen", H0543) — interjection, the fixed closing response of the people to each curse.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with the participle 'a.Rur ("cursed"), which functions predicatively without a copula, a typical construction in this chapter's curse formulas. Its grammatical subject is the participle sho.Khev ("one who lies"), itself modified by the prepositional phrase 'im-cho.tan.T-o ("with his mother-in-law"), where the construct participle cho.tan.T takes the third-person masculine singular suffix o. The result is a nominal-style sentence: "Cursed [is] the one lying with his mother-in-law."

The second half of the verse shifts to narrative structure through the vav on 'a.Mar, marked as a sequential perfect that continues the action begun by the initial curse formula: "and it will say." The subject of this verb is kol-ha'Am ("all the people"), a construct chain meaning "all of the people," with the definite article ha attached to 'Am ("people"). The verse ends with the interjection 'a.Men, the people's spoken response. This two-part structure — curse pronouncement followed by communal response — repeats identically across the surrounding verses of the chapter, with only the specific prohibited act changing.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) text shown here contains an expanded reading with two curse-and-response units: one against "sleeping with his bride" (νύμφης, "bride/daughter-in-law") and a second against "sleeping with his wife's sister" (ἀδελφῆς γυναικὸς), each followed by "Γένοιτο" ("may it be," rendering amen). The Hebrew text as given contains only a single curse concerning the cho.tan.T ("mother-in-law"). The Vulgate, RV1909, BSB, and SBLIBRE all follow the single-curse structure of the Hebrew, rendering cho.tan.T as "mother-in-law" (socru/suegra) rather than the LXX's "bride" (νύμφης).