Deuteronomy 28:8

Summary

Deuteronomy 28:8 describes Yehovah acting toward the storehouses and labor of the addressee: a blessing is set upon the grain-barns and "every undertaking of the hand," followed by a further blessing "in the land" that Yehovah is described as giving. The verse uses two distinct verb forms for this blessing-action, one grammatically different from the other.

Key words

• yeTzav ("he will command", H6680) — piel jussive form: grammatically "let him command," though often rendered as a plain future.
• 'itekha ("with you", H0854 + suffix) — the preposition "with," not to be confused with the following 'et (H0853), the unrelated direct-object marker; both appear in this verse spelled similarly.
• mishLach yaDekha ("the undertaking of your hand", H4916A construct + H3027U construct) — a construct chain literally "the sending-forth of your hand," an idiom for one's work or enterprise.
• veRakhekha ("and he will bless you", H1288) — piel verb in the sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by yetzav.
• noTen ("[is] giving", H5414G) — qal participle, denoting an ongoing or present action ("the one giving") rather than a completed or future one.

What the text says

The sentence opens with yetzav Yehovah 'itekha 'et-ha-berakhah — grammatically a jussive form of the piel verb tzavah ("to command"), placing Yehovah as subject and "the blessing" (ha-berakhah, H1293) as the direct object marked by 'et (H0853). The blessing is located "in your barns" (ba-'asameikha, H0618) "and in all the undertaking of your hand" (mishlach yadekha), a construct phrase covering labor and enterprise broadly. The vav-prefixed veRakhekha then continues the sequence with a second, distinct verb of blessing, this time directly conjugated with a pronominal suffix ("he will bless you"), locating this second blessing "in the land" (ba-'aretz, H0776G). That land is qualified by a relative clause: "which Yehovah your God" noten ("[is] giving") "to you" — a participle indicating an action presented as continuous or ongoing rather than a single future event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yetzav with the optative ἀποστείλαι ("may he send"), shifting the verb's sense from "command" to "send," while the Vulgate uses the future indicative Emittet ("he will send"), also departing from the commanding sense of the Hebrew piel. For the final clause, the Hebrew participle noten ("is giving," ongoing) is matched by the LXX present δίδωσίν ("gives"), but the Vulgate has quam acceperis ("which you shall have received"), a future-perfect construction differing in aspect from both the Hebrew and the LXX.