Deuteronomy 28:39
כְּרָמִים תִּטַּע וְעָבָדְתָּ וְיַיִן לֹֽא־תִשְׁתֶּה וְלֹא תֶאֱגֹר כִּי תֹאכְלֶנּוּ הַתֹּלָֽעַת׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
כְּרָמִ֥ים תִּטַּ֖ע וְעָבָ֑דְתָּ וְיַ֤יִן לֹֽא־תִשְׁתֶּה֙ וְלֹ֣א תֶאֱגֹ֔ר כִּ֥י תֹאכְלֶ֖נּוּ הַתֹּלָֽעַת׃
ἀμπελώνα φυτεύσεις καὶ κατεργᾷ, καὶ οἶνον οὐ πίεσαι οὐδὲ εὐφρανθήσῃ ἐξ αὐτοῦ, ὅτι καταφάγεται αὐτὰ ὁ σκώληξ.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Vineam plantabis, et fodies: et vinum non bibes, nec colliges ex ea quippiam: quoniam vastabitur vermibus.
Plantarás viñas y las labrarás, pero no beberás del vino ni cosecharás, porque los gusanos se las comerán.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Plantarás viñas y labrarás, mas no beberás vino, ni cogerás uvas; porque el gusano las comerá.
You will plant and cultivate vineyards, but will neither drink the wine nor gather the grapes, because worms will eat them.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Deuteronomy 28:39 describes a futility curse: the addressee will plant and tend kera.mim ("vineyards", H3754), yet will neither drink the yayin ("wine", H3196) nor gather its produce, because ha.tola'at ("the worm", H8438A) will consume it first.
Key words
- ti.Ta' ("you will plant", H5193) — qal imperfect, expressing the ongoing/future act of planting.
- 'a.Va.de.ta ("you will labor", H5647I) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the imperfect verb, marking the sustained effort of working the vineyard.
- tish.Teh ("you will drink", H8354) — qal imperfect negated by lo' ("not", H3808), denying the expected outcome of the labor.
- te.'e.Gor ("you will gather", H0103) — qal imperfect, again negated, denying the harvest itself.
- to.La.'at ("worm", H8438A) with definite article ha ("the", H9009) — feminine singular noun functioning as a collective agent that consumes the produce.
What the text says
The verse is built as a chain of verbs linked by ve ("and", H9001/H9002), moving from planting (ti.Ta') to laboring ('a.Va.de.ta) to the negated results: not drinking (lo' tish.Teh) and not gathering (lo' te.'e.Gor). This sequence mirrors ordinary agricultural process — plant, cultivate, harvest, consume — but the pattern is broken at the point of harvest and consumption, which are both explicitly denied. The causal clause introduced by ki ("for/that", H3588A) explains the reason: to.khe.Le.nu ("it will eat it", H0398 + suffix H9033), with the subject being ha.tola'at ("the worm", H8438A). The verb to.khe.Le.nu is grammatically feminine singular, agreeing with the feminine noun tola'at, and the pronominal suffix -nu ("it," referring back to the wine or its produce) marks the object being consumed. The structure thus places labor and expectation at the front of the sentence and the frustrating cause (the worm eating the produce) at the end, giving the verse a build-up-and-collapse shape typical of the surrounding futility curses in this chapter.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders the double negation with two verbs, "you will not drink nor be cheered by it" (οὐ πίεσαι οὐδὲ εὐφρανθήσῃ ἐξ αὐτοῦ), where the Hebrew has only "you will not drink... you will not gather" (lo' tish.Teh... lo' te.'e.Gor). The LXX also uses the singular ho skōlēx ("the worm") consistent with the Hebrew ha.tola'at, but with a plural object auta ("them"), while the Hebrew suffix -nu on to.khe.Le.nu is singular. The Vulgate shifts the grammatical subject, using a passive construction, "vastabitur vermibus" ("it will be ravaged by worms"), where the Hebrew and LXX keep the worm as the active subject of the eating.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.