Deuteronomy 28:29

Summary

The verse describes a curse-consequence: the addressee will grope blindly at noon like a blind man in darkness, will fail in his undertakings, and will be permanently oppressed and robbed with no one to rescue him. The passage uses two parallel comparisons and ends in a statement of total, ongoing helplessness.

Key words

• mema.shesh ("groping", H4959) — piel participle, portraying the subject as continuously performing the intensive action of feeling/groping, not a single act.
• tzohorayim ("noontide", H6672A) — masculine dual noun, referring to the peak of daylight, sharpening the irony of groping precisely when light should be strongest.
• ye.mashesh ("he gropes", H4959) — piel imperfect, describing the blind man's habitual or characteristic groping, used as the standard of comparison (ka'asher, "as", H0834D).
• tatzliach ("you will make successful", H6743B) — hiphil imperfect, causative form: the subject himself will not "cause success" in his own ways (derakheikha, "your ways", H1870G + H9021).
• ein moshia' ("there is no deliverer", H0369 + H3467) — construct noun ein ("there not") governing the hiphil participle moshia' ("the one saving"), forming a fixed negative-existential clause: "there is no one who saves."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative sequential form ve.hayita ("and you will be", H1961), a qal perfect used with vav to continue a chain of consequences begun earlier in the passage. The subject is described through the participle mema.shesh ("groping"), a piel form that intensifies the basic action of touching/feeling — the person is depicted as habitually or repeatedly groping, not merely stumbling once. This groping happens ba.tzohorayim ("in the noontide", H6672A), at the height of daylight, which is then explicitly compared (ka'asher, "as", H0834D) to how ha.'iver ("the blind [person]", H5787) gropes ba.'afelah ("in the darkness", H0653). The comparison equates the sighted person's condition at noon with the blind person's condition at night, without asserting causation beyond the simile itself.

The second clause states ve.lo tatzliach et-derakheikha — "and you will not make your ways successful" — using the hiphil imperfect tatzliach (H6743B), a causative form indicating the subject's own inability to bring about success in his "ways" (derakheikha, construct plural + 2nd person suffix, H1870G + H9021). The text then repeats the sequential ve.hayita structure to introduce a further state: the subject will be 'akh ("only", H0389) 'ashuk ("oppressed", H6231) and gazul ("robbed", H1497), both qal passive participles marking a durative, passive condition rather than a single event. This lasts kol-ha.yamim ("all the days", H3605 + H3117J), and the verse closes with the fixed idiom ve.'ein moshia' ("and there is no deliverer/savior"), where 'ein (H0369) functions as a negative existential particle governing the hiphil participle moshia' (H3467), denying the presence of any rescuing agent.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tzohorayim as mesēmbrias ("midday") and 'afelah as skotei ("darkness"), matching the Hebrew pairing closely. The Vulgate adds tempore ("time") and phrases the final clause as nec habeas qui liberet te ("nor have one who frees you"), using liberet rather than a direct equivalent of "save," a lexical variation from the Hebrew moshia' ("deliverer/savior", H3467). The LXX's ho boēthōn ("the one helping") likewise shifts the semantic field from "saving" to "helping," differing slightly from the Hebrew root H3467.