Deuteronomy 29:19

Summary

The verse describes a person who, upon hearing the words of the covenant oath, congratulates himself internally that he will have peace even while following the stubbornness of his own heart. The final clause uses an agricultural idiom to describe the consequence of this attitude, comparing watered and thirsty ground being swept away together.

Key words

• hitbarekh ("he will bless himself", H1288) — hithpael (reflexive) sequential perfect; the reflexive stem indicates the subject performs the blessing upon himself, not on others.
• sherirut ("stubbornness of", H8307) — feminine singular construct, forming a chain with libbi ("my heart", H3820A) to produce "the stubbornness of my heart," the interior attitude driving the person's behavior.
• sfot ("to sweep away", H5595) — qal infinitive introduced by lema'an ("so as", H4616), expressing purpose or result: the infinitive names the action that follows from the preceding stubborn walking.
• ravah ("watered [ground]", H7302) — feminine singular adjective, paired antithetically with tzeme'ah ("thirsty [ground]", H6771) to form a merism (two opposites representing a totality).
• ha'alah hazot ("this oath", H0423 + H2063) — definite noun with demonstrative, anchoring the "words" heard in verse to a specific, already-established oath.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on hayah ("it will be", H1961), a sequential perfect that continues the chain of consequences begun earlier in the passage. The temporal clause beshom'o ("when he hears", built on the infinitive sha.me + suffix "his") sets the scene: a person hearing "the words of this oath" (divrei ha'alah hazot). The main action follows with another sequential perfect, hitbarekh, in the hithpael stem — grammatically marking that the blessing is reflexive, directed by the subject toward himself, introduced by lelemor ("saying") before the quoted inner speech.

The quoted speech contains two clauses joined by ki (H3588A, "for/that"): "peace will be to me" (shalom yihyeh li, imperfect verb expressing anticipated/ongoing state) and "in the stubbornness of my heart I will walk" (bisherirut libi elekh, imperfect, first person). The construct chain sherirut libi ties the abstract noun tightly to "heart," expressing an internal quality rather than an external circumstance.

The closing clause is introduced by lema'an + infinitive sfot, producing "so as to sweep away." The direct objects are two feminine singular adjectives functioning as nouns — ha-ravah ("the watered") and ha-tzeme'ah ("the thirsty") — joined by et (H0854, "with"). This pairing forms a merism describing two opposite states of ground being swept away together, without further explanation of the image within the Hebrew text itself.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final clause very differently: ἵνα μὴ συναπολέσῃ ὁ ἁμαρτωλὸς τὸν ἀναμάρτητον ("lest the sinner destroy together the sinless one"), replacing the Hebrew's agricultural imagery (watered/thirsty ground) with a moral pairing (sinner/sinless person). The Vulgate offers a third variant: "absumat ebria sitientem" ("let the drunk consume the thirsty one"), using ebria ("drunk," feminine) rather than "watered," producing yet another image distinct from both the Hebrew and the LXX. The BSB and SBLIBRE translations follow the Hebrew's agricultural pairing more closely ("watered land"/"dry," "lo húmedo"/"lo seco"), while the LXX and Vulgate diverge from this image entirely.