Deuteronomy 28:62

Summary

The verse states that the people will be reduced to a small number, in contrast to their former state when they were as numerous as the stars of the sky. This diminishment is presented as a consequence of not listening to the voice of Yehovah.

Key words

• nish'arTem ("you will be left", H7604) — niphal perfect, passive/reflexive sense: the subject undergoes the action of "being left remaining," continuing the narrative sequence from prior verses.
• metei ("men of", H4962) — masculine plural construct, forming the phrase "men of fewness," i.e., a small group.
• tachat ("in place of", H8478J) — construct noun functioning here as a comparative marker, setting up a contrast between two states (few vs. many).
• kekhokhvei ("like [the] stars of", H3556) — preposition ke + construct plural, building the simile "like the stars of the heavens."
• shama'ta ("you have listened", H8085H) — qal perfect, second person masculine singular, marking a completed past failure to listen, distinct from the plural verbs used earlier in the verse.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a narrative vav attached to nish'arTem, continuing a chain of consequences described earlier in the chapter. The verb is niphal, meaning the people are the ones who "are left" or "remain" — the construction does not specify an external agent causing this reduction, only that it happens to them. This is followed by bi-metei me'at, literally "in men of fewness," a construct phrase functioning adverbially to describe the resulting small quantity.

The next clause, introduced by tachat 'asher, creates a contrast: "in place of that which you were." This sets up a former condition — described with heyiTem ("you were," qal perfect) — compared via ke-... la-rov ("like ... for multitude") to the stars of the heavens (kekhokhvei hashamayim), a construct chain meaning "the stars of the heavens" used here as a standard of great quantity.

The final clause is joined by ki, which can function as causal ("for," "because") or conditional ("if," "that") depending on context; here it introduces the stated reason. Notably, the verbal person shifts: the earlier verbs (nish'arTem, heyiTem) are second person plural, but shama'ta ("you have listened") is second person masculine singular. This singular verb form addresses the group collectively as one entity, a shift not visible in most translations, which render it uniformly as plural or singular throughout.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ki with ὅτι twice (redundantly, "ἀνθ' ὧν ὅτι"), reflecting the double sense of tachat + ki in a slightly different syntactic joining than the Hebrew's single contrastive clause. The Vulgate uses "qui prius eratis" ("who previously were"), making explicit a temporal sense ("previously") not directly present in the Hebrew tachat 'asher, which more literally means "in place of that which." The BSB restructures the verse's order, placing the "as numerous as stars" clause first as a relative description, whereas the Hebrew places the fewness-clause first and the star-simile second, joined by tachat.