Deuteronomy 29:26

Summary

The verse narrates that the people went, served other gods, and bowed down to them — gods they had not known and that had not been allotted to them. It functions as the enumerated reason for a covenant curse described in surrounding verses.

Key words

• va-i.ye.le.Khu ("and they went", H1980G) — qal narrative verb, marking the sequential opening action of the chain of apostasy.
• 'E.lo.Him ("gods", H0430J) — masculine plural noun, appearing twice in the verse (once with 'a.che.Rim, "other," H0312, and once alone before the relative clause), each time referring to foreign deities.
• ye.da.'U ("they had known", H3045) — qal perfect, denoting a completed state prior to the narrated events; the object suffix -m ("them", H9038) attaches the pronoun directly to the verb.
• cha.Lak ("he had assigned", H2505A) — qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular, with no explicit subject noun in this verse; the subject must be inferred from context.
• la.Hem ("to them", H9005+H9038) — preposition with article-like form and pronominal suffix, repeated twice to mark the recipients of both worship and non-allotment.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is a chain of four narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — va-i.ye.le.Khu, va-i.ya.'av.Du, va-i.yish.ta.cha.Vu — describing sequential actions: going, serving, and bowing down. The object of these actions, 'E.lo.Him 'a.che.Rim ("other gods," H0430J + H0312), is stated once, then the word 'E.lo.Him recurs alone, introduced by the relative particle 'a.Sher ("which," H0834A), opening a subordinate clause that further qualifies these gods: they were unknown (lo' ye.da.'Um, "they had not known them") and unallotted (ve-lo' cha.Lak la.Hem, "and he had not assigned to them"). The final verb cha.Lak has no stated subject in the Hebrew clause itself — it is a bare 3rd-person singular perfect, so grammatically the doer of the "assigning" is not named within this verse.

The double appearance of 'E.lo.Him — first modified by "other," then resumed by the relative clause — creates an emphatic repetition in Hebrew that some versions render with a pronoun instead of repeating the noun.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew repeats 'E.lo.Him ("gods") twice, once with "other" and once introducing the relative clause. The LXX collapses this into a single θεοῖς ἑτέροις followed by the relative pronoun οὕς ("whom"), not repeating "gods." The Vulgate similarly uses the pronoun "eos" rather than restating "diis."

Regarding cha.Lak ("he had assigned," H2505A), the Hebrew and LXX (διένειμεν, "he apportioned") both leave the subject grammatically unspecified within the verse. The Vulgate shifts to a passive construction, "quibus non fuerant attributi" ("to whom they had not been attributed"), removing the active subject altogether. The BSB English rendering explicitly supplies "the LORD" as the subject of "had not given," an identification not lexically present in the Hebrew clause itself.