Deuteronomy 28:33

Summary

The verse describes a foreign people consuming the produce of the land and the fruit of labor belonging to the addressee, who will instead experience continuous oppression and crushing for the duration of his days.

Key words

• pe.Ri ("fruit of", H6529) — construct noun opening the sentence, placing emphasis on "fruit" as the object fronted before the verb, a common Hebrew word-order device for topicalization.
• ye.Gi.'a.kha ("your toil/result of toil", H3018 + suffix) — construct noun with second-person suffix, paired with pe.Ri via khol ("all", H3605) to form a merism covering both agricultural produce and general labor.
• yo.Khal ("it will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, marking future/ongoing action; the subject ("a people") follows the verb, typical of Hebrew verb-subject order.
• ya.Da.'e.ta ("you have known", H3045) — qal perfect describing completed lack of prior acquaintance with this people, modified by the negation lo' ("not", H3808).
• 'a.Shuk ("oppressed", H6231) and ra.Tzutz ("crushed", H7533) — both qal passive participles, masculine singular, describing an ongoing state rather than a single event, reinforced by rak ("only", H7535) restricting the condition exclusively to this state.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by a narrative vav (H9001) on ha.Yi.ta ("you will be", H1961). The first clause fronts the object — pe.Ri 'ad.ma.te.kha ("fruit of your ground", H6529 + H0127G) and khol ye.Gi.'a.kha ("all your toil", H3605 + H3018) — before the verb yo.Khal ("it will eat", H0398), whose grammatical subject, 'am ("a people", H5971A), appears afterward. This word order highlights what is consumed rather than who consumes it. The relative clause 'a.Sher lo'- ya.Da.'e.ta ("which you have not known", H0834A + H3808 + H3045) uses a qal perfect to mark the unfamiliarity as an established, completed fact prior to the events described.

The second clause shifts to a qal sequential perfect, ha.Yi.ta ("you will be", H1961), continuing the narrative sequence begun by the first verb. The adverb rak ("only", H7535) restricts the subject's condition to nothing but the two paired passive participles 'a.Shuk ("oppressed", H6231) and ra.Tzutz ("crushed", H7533). Passive participles here denote a persistent state rather than a single completed action, and the phrase kol ha.Yamim ("all the days", H3605 + H9009 + H3117J) extends this state across an unspecified but total duration.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders pe.Ri 'ad.ma.te.kha as "τὰ ἐκφόρια τῆς γῆς σου" ("the produce of your land"), using a general term for agricultural yield rather than a direct construct paralleling "fruit of your ground." The Vulgate's "Fructus terræ tuæ" ("fruit of your land") stays closer to the Hebrew construct structure. The Vulgate also adds "semper" ("always") explicitly before "calumniam sustinens" ("enduring accusation"), where the Hebrew has only rak ("only") modifying the participles directly, without a separate temporal adverb at that point in the clause.