Deuteronomy 28:59

Summary

The verse states that Yehovah will make the plagues affecting the addressee and his descendants extraordinary — described as great, lasting plagues, and as harmful, lasting sicknesses. It continues the conditional sequence of covenant consequences begun earlier in the chapter.

Key words

• hif.La' ("he will make extraordinary", H6381) — hiphil causative, sequential perfect continuing the narrative chain; the causative form indicates Yehovah as the agent making something exceptional or beyond the ordinary happen.
• ma.Ko.te.kha ("your plagues", H4347 + H9021) — feminine plural noun in construct with a 2nd person masculine singular suffix, marking the plagues as belonging to "you."
• zar.'E.kha ("your offspring", H2233H + H9021) — masculine singular noun in construct with the same suffix, extending the object of the plagues to descendants.
• ge.do.lOt ("great", H1419A) and ra.'Im ("harmful", H7451A) — plural adjectives modifying "plagues" and "sicknesses" respectively, each agreeing in gender and number with its noun.
• Ne.'e.ma.Not / ne.'e.ma.Nim ("lasting", H0539) — niphal participles, feminine and masculine plural forms of the same root, describing durability or persistence; the root can carry a sense of "being faithful/established," here applied to the endurance of the plagues and sicknesses.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative ve- ("and") attached to hif.La' (H6381), a hiphil sequential perfect verb that continues the chain of covenant-curse statements from the preceding verses. The subject is Yehovah (H3068), and the verb governs two objects marked by the untranslated direct-object markers 'et- (H0853): first ma.Ko.te.kha ("your plagues," H4347+H9021), then ve-'Et ma.Kot zar.'E.kha ("and the plagues of your offspring," H4347+H2233H+H9021). Both objects are feminine plural construct nouns, showing that the plagues belong to two distinct parties — the addressee directly and his descendants.

After naming these objects, the text piles up two sets of paired descriptors without a repeated verb: ma.Kot ge.do.lOt ve-ne.'e.ma.Not ("plagues, great and lasting") and cho.la.Yim ra.'Im ve-ne.'e.ma.Nim ("sicknesses, harmful and lasting"). The repetition of the root behind ne.'e.ma.Not/ne.'e.ma.Nim (H0539) in both feminine and masculine plural forms creates a grammatical echo across the two noun phrases — "plagues" (feminine) and "sicknesses" (masculine) — each paired with its own gender-matched form of the same participle, reinforcing the idea of persistence through repeated structure rather than through a single adjective applied once.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hif.La' (H6381) as paradoxasei ("will make marvelous/extraordinary"), close to the causative sense of the Hebrew hiphil. The Vulgate uses augebit ("will increase"), which shifts the nuance from "making extraordinary" to "multiplying" the plagues. Where the Hebrew ne.'e.ma.Not/ne.'e.ma.Nim (H0539) conveys "lasting" or "established," the LXX's second occurrence uses pistas ("faithful/trustworthy"), reflecting a different semantic angle of the same root's range, while the Vulgate consistently uses perseverantes/perpetuas ("persisting"/"perpetual").