Deuteronomy 28:5

Summary

This short formulaic verse pronounces a blessing over two household items associated with food preparation: the tan'akha ("your basket", H2935) and the mish'artekha ("your kneading trough", H4863). Both are declared "blessed" (baruch, H1288) using a single passive participle governing both nouns.

Key words

• ba.Rukh ("[will be] blessed", H1288) — qal passive participle, masculine singular; though grammatically singular, it functions here as the predicate for two coordinated nouns.
• tan.'a.Kha ("your basket", H2935) — masculine singular noun in construct form with a second-person masculine singular suffix, referring to a container for food, likely dough or produce.
• mish.'ar.Te.kha ("your kneading trough", H4863) — feminine singular noun in construct form with the same suffix, referring to a vessel used for mixing dough.
• u. ("and", H9002) — the conjunction linking the two nouns as compound subjects of the single participle baruch.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence consists of a single predicate, the passive participle baruch ("blessed", H1288), followed by two coordinated noun phrases: tan'akha ("your basket") and mish'artekha ("your kneading trough"), joined by the conjunction u ("and", H9002). Grammatically notable is that baruch is masculine singular, yet it applies to both nouns — one masculine (tan'akha) and one feminine (mish'artekha). This reflects a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew where a predicate agrees with the first or nearest noun in a compound subject rather than inflecting for both, producing a single governing participle rather than two separate blessings.

Both nouns appear in construct form with a second-person masculine singular pronominal suffix ("your"), indicating that the blessing is addressed to an individual (or collectively to a group addressed as "you" singular, consistent with the surrounding covenantal context of the chapter). The imagery centers on food production: the basket for holding or carrying goods and the trough for kneading dough, representing stages of food preparation from storage to processing.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew presents one participle (baruch) governing two nouns, but the Vulgate renders this with two separate predicates: "Benedicta horrea tua, et benedictae reliquiae tuae" — repeating "blessed" for each noun individually rather than using a single shared verb form. The Septuagint similarly uses a plural adjective, eulogemenai ("blessed", feminine plural), applied to both nouns together as a plural subject, differing from the Hebrew's singular participle construction.

Additionally, both the LXX and Vulgate diverge lexically from the Hebrew nouns: where the Hebrew has tan'akha ("basket"), the LXX has apothēkai ("storehouses") and the Vulgate has horrea ("granaries"); where the Hebrew has mish'artekha ("kneading trough"), the LXX has enkatalimmata ("remains/leftovers") and the Vulgate has reliquiae ("remains"). These renderings shift the concrete image of food-preparation vessels toward broader categories of storage and surplus.