Deuteronomy 28:3

Summary

Deuteronomy 28:3 pronounces a blessing on "you" (singular, masculine) applicable in two contrasting settings: the city and the open country. The verse uses parallel structure to declare the same blessed state regardless of location.

Key words

• baRukh ("[will be] blessed", H1288) — qal passive participle, masculine singular; describes a state resulting from a completed action of blessing, rather than an active verb. It appears twice, identically, framing both halves of the verse.
• 'aTah ("you", H0859A) — independent personal pronoun, second person masculine singular; repeated after each instance of baRukh, reinforcing that the same subject is addressed in both clauses.
• 'Ir ("city", H5892B) — feminine singular noun, marked with the preposition-article ba ("in the", H9003), naming the first location.
• sa.Deh ("open country", H7704G) — masculine singular noun, also marked with ba ("in the", H9003), naming the second, contrasting location.
• u ("and", H9002) — the conjunction joining the two parallel clauses into a single balanced statement.

What the text says

The verse consists of two grammatically identical clauses joined by the conjunction u ("and", H9002). Each clause follows the same pattern: participle + pronoun + prepositional phrase. This repetition creates a chiastic-like parallelism where the structure itself, not just the vocabulary, conveys completeness — the blessing covers both a person's presence in an urban environment ('Ir, "city", H5892B) and in a rural or open one (sa.Deh, "open country", H7704G).

The participle baRukh ("[will be] blessed", H1288) is passive, indicating that the subject 'aTah ("you", H0859A) receives the action rather than performing it; no agent is specified within this verse. Because Hebrew participles do not carry inherent tense, the passive form can be understood as describing an ongoing or resultant state, which translators render with future or present tense forms depending on the receiving language's grammar. The two feminine/masculine noun pairing ('Ir feminine, sa.Deh masculine) plus the identical prepositional prefix ba ("in the", H9003) attached to both nouns tightens the parallel structure, emphasizing the merism of "city and country" as representing the totality of place.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew repeats the pronoun 'aTah ("you", H0859A) in both clauses ("blessed you in the city... blessed you in the country"), and the Septuagint (LXX) mirrors this by repeating σὺ ("you") twice. The Vulgate, however, omits the second pronoun, reading "benedictus tu in civitate, et benedictus in agro" — literally "blessed you in the city, and blessed in the field" — dropping the second explicit "you" while the sense of the same subject continuing is implied by context rather than restated grammatically.