Deuteronomy 28:52

Summary

The verse describes a siege that will affect "all your gates" (i.e., all your cities) until the high fortified walls collapse — walls in which the addressee places trust — across the entire land that Yehovah has given. The action of besieging is stated twice, framing a description of the walls and the land.

Key words

• he.Tzar ("it will lay siege", H6887B) — hiphil sequential perfect, causative form meaning "to cause distress/siege"; it opens and closes the verse, appearing at position 2 and again at position 28, creating a repeated frame around the intervening description.
• sha'arei ("gates", H8179H) — masculine plural construct, literally "gates of," used twice (positions 7 and 33) to indicate the city-entrances collectively, standing for the cities themselves.
• chomotei ("walls", H2346G) — feminine plural construct, "walls of," paired with two feminine plural adjectives (gevohot "high" H1364 and betzurot "fortified" H1219) describing the defenses that will fall.
• boteach ("trusting", H0982) — qal participle, masculine singular, expressing an ongoing state ("the one trusting"), describing the addressee's continuous reliance on the walls.
• natan ("he has given", H5414G) — qal perfect, third person, marking a completed action attributed to Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G), referring to the prior gift of the land.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two nearly identical clauses using the verb he.Tzar ("it will lay siege", H6887B) with the preposition-plus-suffix le.kha ("to you") and the phrase be.khol-sha'arei.kha ("in all your gates"). This repetition creates an inclusio: the first occurrence (position 2) opens the description of the walls, and the second occurrence (position 28) closes it, restating the siege after detailing the walls' height, fortification, and the addressee's trust in them (boteach, H0982). Between these two repeated verbs, the text specifies the object of the siege's effect: the walls (chomotei, H2346G) described by two feminine plural adjectives, gevohot ("high", H1364) and betzurot ("fortified", H1219), introduced by the relative particle asher ("which", H0834A).

The phrase be.khol-artzekha ("in all your land") appears twice as well, first following the description of trust in the walls, then again after the second occurrence of the siege verb, before the relative clause naming Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) as the one who natan ("has given", H5414G) the land. The grammatical construct chains (sha'arei, chomotei, artzekha) all mark possession — gates of you, walls of you, land of you — reinforcing that the besieged elements belong to the addressee.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew sha'arei ("gates", H8179H) appears twice, both times literally "gates." The LXXSWETE renders both instances as πόλεσίν ("cities"), shifting from the literal architectural term to the settlements themselves. The VULCLEM is inconsistent: it renders the first occurrence as "urbibus" ("cities"), matching the LXX's approach, but the second occurrence as "portas" ("gates"), matching the Hebrew literally. The BSB and SBLIBRE both consistently use "cities" or "asediarán en todas tus puertas" respectively for both instances, showing translational choices diverging from strict literalism in different directions.