Deuteronomy 29:14

Summary

The verse states that the covenant and oath being established are not limited to the immediate audience ("you") alone. The speaker (Moses, in context) uses the first-person independent pronoun to stress personal agency in this act of covenant-making, which is described with the verb "to cut."

Key words

• 'i.te.Khem ("with you", H0854 + suffix) — preposition with 2nd person masculine plural suffix, marking the recipients of the action.
• le.va.de.Khem ("your aloneness/alone", H0905H + suffix) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, an idiom literally meaning "to your separateness," used to express exclusivity ("you alone").
• 'a.no.Khi ("I", H0595) — independent personal pronoun, grammatically unnecessary since the verb already carries person, but added for emphasis on the subject.
• ko.Ret ("cutting/making", H3772H) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing an ongoing or characteristic action; paired with be.Rit it forms the standard Hebrew idiom for concluding a covenant, literally "to cut a covenant."
• be.Rit ("covenant", H1285) — feminine singular noun, the direct object of the cutting-action, marked by the object particle 'et.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the negation ve.lo' ("and not") followed by the prepositional phrase 'i.te.Khem le.va.de.Khem ("with you, to your aloneness"), a doubled construction where 'itte.khem names the addressees and levad.khem restricts and negates exclusivity. This phrase precedes the verb, which places emphasis on "not with you alone" before the action itself is stated. The subject 'a.no.Khi ("I") is then given explicitly, even though the participle ko.Ret already implies a first-person subject through agreement with the verb "am cutting." This produces a marked, emphatic structure: "Not with you alone — I am the one cutting this covenant." The object is doubled: 'et-ha.be.Rit ha.Zot ("this covenant") and ve.'et-ha.'a.Lah ha.Zot ("and this oath"), both marked with the definite article and demonstrative Zot ("this"), tying the statement to something already mentioned in context.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the phrase as καὶ οὐχ μόνοις μόνοις ("and not to [you] alone, alone"), a doubling of μόνοις that does not correspond to a doubled Hebrew word — the Hebrew has 'itte.khem le.vad.khem ("with you, to your aloneness"), not two occurrences of "alone." The Vulgate uses ferio ("I strike") for the covenant-cutting verb and confirmo ("I confirm") for the oath, splitting one Hebrew participle idiom into two different Latin verbs, and it renders ha'alah ("the oath", singular) as juramenta (plural, "oaths").