Deuteronomy 28:19

Summary

The verse pronounces a curse formula applied to two complementary situations: entering and leaving. It uses a repeated passive participle structure to declare that the subject ("you") is cursed both in the act of coming and in the act of going out.

Key words

• 'aRur ("cursed", H0779) — qal passive participle, masculine singular; appears twice, framing both halves of the verse with the same declarative curse-form rather than a finite verb tense.
• 'aTah ("you", H0859A) — independent personal pronoun, masculine singular; explicitly names the addressee after each occurrence of 'aRur, reinforcing that the curse targets the person directly.
• vo'Ekha ("in your coming", H0935G + H9041) — qal infinitive with prefixed preposition be ("when/in") and 2nd person masculine singular suffix ("your"); expresses the circumstance of entering.
• tze'Tekha ("in your going out", H3318G + H9041) — qal infinitive with prefixed preposition be and the same suffix; expresses the circumstance of exiting, forming a mirror pair with vo'Ekha.
• ve ("and", H9002) — simple conjunction linking the two clauses into one continuous statement.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two nearly identical clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002): "'aRur 'aTah be-vo'Ekha" and "'aRur 'aTah be-tze'Tekha." Each clause opens with the passive participle 'aRur ("cursed") followed immediately by the pronoun 'aTah ("you"), a construction that in Biblical Hebrew functions as a declarative statement rather than a full finite-verb sentence — there is no explicit "to be" verb, so the participle itself carries the sense of an enduring state applied to the subject.

The two infinitives vo'Ekha ("in your coming") and tze'Tekha ("in your going out") are grammatically parallel: both are qal infinitives prefixed with be ("when/in") and suffixed with the second-person masculine singular pronoun -kha ("your"). This pairing of opposite motions — entering and exiting — forms a merism, a figure in which two contrasting terms represent the totality of movement or activity, without additional adverbs or qualifiers in the Hebrew text itself.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew order is "coming" (vo'Ekha) followed by "going out" (tze'Tekha). The Vulgate preserves this sequence: "ingrediens" (entering), then "egrediens" (going out). The Septuagint (LXXSWETE), however, reverses the order, placing ἐκπορεύεσθαι ("going out") before εἰσπορεύεσθαι ("coming in"). The Spanish (RV1909, SBLIBRE) and English (BSB) versions follow the Hebrew/Vulgate sequence, listing "entrar/entres" ("enter") before "salir/salgas" ("go out").