Deuteronomy 28:37

Summary

Deuteronomy 28:37 states that the addressee (Israel, spoken to as a single "you") will become an object of horror, a byword, and a taunt among all the peoples to which Yehovah will drive him. The verse closes the section of curses tied to disobedience of the covenant, describing the reaction of foreign nations rather than a divine action itself.

Key words

• ha.Yi.ta ("you will become", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine singular; continues the chain of curse-consequences begun earlier in the passage.
• sha.Mah ("a horror", H8047H) — feminine singular noun, first of three fates introduced by the preposition le ("into"), marking the future state itself rather than a mere comparison.
• sh.ni.Nah ("a taunt", H8148) — feminine singular noun, third term of the triad, joined by ve ("and") and li, completing the sequence shammah / mashal / sheninah.
• ye.na.heg.Kha ("he will drive away you", H5090A + H9031) — piel imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular with 2nd person masculine singular suffix; the piel stem gives an intensive or causative nuance to "driving," and the imperfect marks an action not yet completed at the time of speaking.
• Sha.mah ("there", H8033G + H9011) — adverb sham with directional he, indicating motion "toward there," anchoring the relative clause about the peoples' location.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a chain introduced by the narrative ve attached to hayita, continuing a sequence of curse-statements. The predicate consists of three parallel prepositional phrases — le-shammah, le-mashal, ve-li-sheninah — each using le ("into") to mark the resulting state, not a simile. This triple construction stacks three distinct terms (horror, byword, taunt) as cumulative descriptions of the same future condition, rather than three separate events.

The following clause, introduced by asher ("that/who"), specifies where this condition will be experienced: "among all the peoples" (be-khol ha-'amim), using khol in construct form to link tightly to the following plural noun. The verb yenahegkha, in the piel imperfect, describes Yehovah's ongoing or future action of driving the addressee among those peoples; the piel stem intensifies the basic idea of leading/driving found in the root. The final word, shammah (with directional he), reinforces the sense of destination — "toward there" — echoing the location just introduced by the relative clause.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) inserts ἐκεῖ ("there") twice: once right after ἔσῃ ("you will be") and again at the very end matching the Hebrew shammah ("there," H8033G). The Hebrew text has only one "there," positioned at the end; the earlier Greek ἐκεῖ has no direct counterpart in the word-by-word Hebrew data, possibly reflecting a rendering influenced by the visual/phonetic similarity between shammah ("horror," H8047H) and shammah ("there," H8033G).

The Vulgate uses only two terms — proverbium and fabulam — where the Hebrew lists three (shammah, mashal, sheninah), and renders the final clause as "to whom the Lord will lead you in" (introduxerit), differing from the Hebrew's yenahegkha ("he will drive you").

The SBLIBRE Spanish translation shifts to third-person plural ("se convertirán... los lleve"), while the Hebrew verb forms in the data are second-person masculine singular.