Deuteronomy 28:12

Summary

Deuteronomy 28:12 describes Yehovah opening his "good storehouse," identified with the heavens, to give rain to the land at the right time and to bless all human labor. The verse ends with a contrast: the addressee will lend to many nations but will not need to borrow.

Key words

• yiftach ("he will open", H6605A) — qal imperfect, third person, describing Yehovah's future/ongoing action of opening.
• 'otzar-o ha-Tov ("his good storehouse", H0214 + H2896A) — construct noun with pronominal suffix and article, naming the object being opened, further specified by the following phrase.
• ha-shamayim ("the heavens", H8064) — masculine plural noun with article, placed in apposition to "his good storehouse," equating the two.
• hilvita ("you will lend to", H3867B) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain; the causative stem marks the subject as the one initiating the lending.
• tilveh ("you will borrow", H3867B) — qal imperfect, same root as hilvita but in the simple stem, marking the subject as recipient rather than initiator of the loan action.

What the text says

The sentence opens with yiftach ("he will open", H6605A) governing Yehovah as subject and lekha ("for you", built from H9005 + H9031) as indirect object. The direct object is marked twice by 'et (H0853, untranslated): first 'et-'otzar-o ha-tov ("his good storehouse"), then 'et ha-shamayim ("the heavens"). Because both phrases are marked as direct objects of the same verb, "the heavens" stands in apposition to "his good storehouse" — the storehouse is not a separate space but is identified with the sky itself.

Two infinitive clauses follow, each governed by le- ("to", H9005): la-tet ("to give", H5414G) and u-le-varekh ("and to bless", H1288, piel infinitive). The first infinitive introduces metar 'artze-kha be-'itto ("the rain of your land in its appointed time"), a chain of construct nouns (metar, H4306; 'aretz, H0776G; 'et, H6256) each carrying a pronominal suffix that ties the rain-giving to the addressee's own land and its proper season. The second infinitive extends the action of opening to blessing kol ma'aseh yade-kha ("all the work of your hand"), another construct chain (H4639G + H3027G) marking totality of the addressee's labor as the object of blessing.

The final clause shifts from infinitives to finite verbs joined by the narrative ve- (H9001): ve-hilvita goyim rabbim ("and you will lend to many nations", hiphil sequential perfect of H3867B) is balanced against ve-'attah lo' tilveh ("and you, you will not borrow", qal imperfect of the same root, H3867B). The root H3867B appears in two stems — hiphil for lending (causative, initiating the loan) and qal for borrowing (receiving the loan) — a grammatical distinction the English translations "lend/borrow" preserve semantically but not morphologically. The independent pronoun 'attah ("you", H0859A) is added before the negated verb, giving contrastive emphasis to the subject in the second half of the pair.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the construct chain 'otzar-o ha-tov ... ha-shamayim as θησαυρὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀγαθόν, τὸν οὐρανόν, preserving the apposition. The Vulgate renders it as thesaurum suum optimum, cælum, likewise appositional, though SBLIBRE reworks the phrase as "su buen tesoro en el cielo" ("his good treasure in heaven"), turning the apposition into a locative phrase — the heavens as location of the treasure rather than being identified with it.