Deuteronomy 29:22

Summary

The verse announces that a future generation — the descendants of the Israelites and foreigners coming from distant lands — will speak about what they observe: the plagues and sicknesses that Yehovah brought upon the land. The sentence sets up the reaction of outsiders and later generations to the devastation described in the surrounding chapter.

Key words

• 'a.Mar ("it will say", H0559) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain; grammatically it anticipates an action that will follow after prior conditions, functioning here almost like a future.
• ha.Dor ("the generation", H1755) with ha.'a.cha.Ron ("later", H0314) — a definite singular noun modified by a definite adjective, together meaning "the later generation," the subject of the verb 'a.Mar.
• na.khe.Ri ("foreigner", H5237) — definite singular adjective functioning as a noun, paired with ha.Dor as a second subject who will also speak/see.
• chi.Lah ("he has made sick", H2470H) — piel perfect, intensive stem denoting a completed, forceful causative action ("to cause sickness"), with Yehovah as subject.
• ta.cha.lu.'Ei. ("diseases of", H8463) — masculine plural construct with pronominal suffix ha ("her/its"), linking the diseases directly to "the land."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a long compound subject followed by two verbs in sequence. The first verb, 'a.Mar ("it will say", H0559), has as subject "the later generation" (ha.Dor ha.'a.cha.Ron) together with "your children who will arise after you" (be.nei.khem 'a.Sher ya.Ku.mu me.'A.cha.rei.khem) and "the foreigner who will come from a distant land" (ha.na.khe.Ri 'a.Sher ya.Vo' me.'E.retz re.cho.Kah). These three phrases are joined by conjunctions, forming a single composite subject for the verb "will say."

The second verb, ra.'u ("they will see", H7200G), also sequential perfect, introduces what this composite subject will observe: "the plagues of the land" (ma.Kot ha.'A.retz, construct chain) and "its diseases" (ta.cha.lu.'Ei.ha, construct with suffix "her"). The relative clause 'a.Sher chi.Lah Yehovah bah ("which Yehovah has made sick in it") closes the verse, using the piel perfect chi.Lah (H2470H) to mark a completed, intensified causative action attributed grammatically to Yehovah (H3068G) as subject, with the land as the object marked by the preposition-plus-suffix Bah ("in it").

The construct chains (be.nei... 'a.cha.rei..., ma.Kot ha.'A.retz, ta.cha.lu.'Ei.ha) tightly bind possessor and possessed, a feature that translations render with prepositions ("of," "on it") but that in Hebrew is a single grammatical unit without an intervening word.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chi.Lah ("he has made sick", H2470H) with ἀπέστειλεν ("he sent"), shifting the causative-illness sense toward a sending action, and uses Κύριος ("Lord") where the Hebrew has the tetragrammaton Yehovah (H3068G). The Vulgate similarly uses "Dominus" ("Lord") and "afflixerit" ("he has afflicted"), a broader term than the specific piel "made sick" of the Hebrew. The Hebrew text also opens with 'a.Mar ("it will say", H0559) as the main verb governing the whole subject clause, while the LXX and Vulgate structure the sentence so that "seeing" (ὄψονται / videntes) becomes more prominent, with "saying" placed as the main verb in Hebrew but functioning differently in syntax across versions.