Deuteronomy 30:19

Summary

The speaker (Moses, in context) formally invokes heaven and earth as witnesses against the addressee, declaring that life and death, blessing and curse, have been placed before him. He then instructs the addressee to choose life, with the stated purpose that he and his offspring may live.

Key words

• ha'iDoti ("I call as witnesses", H5749B) — Hiphil perfect, causative: the speaker causes the heavens and earth to function as legal witnesses; the completed aspect frames this as an act performed at the moment of speaking.
• hashaMayim ("the heavens", H8064) and ha'Aretz ("the earth", H0776G) — both take the definite article and are marked by the object marker 'et (H0853), showing they are the direct objects being "called" as witnesses.
• naTati ("I have set", H5414H) — Qal perfect: a simple completed act of placing the two paired options (life/death, blessing/curse) before the addressee.
• uvaCharta ("and you will choose", H0977) — Qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), continuing the narrative chain from naTati; grammatically it presents the choosing as the next link in the sequence following the setting-before.
• techYeh ("you may live", H2421) — Qal jussive, expressing purpose/result ("so that you may live") tied to the particle lema'an ("so that", H4616).

What the text says

The verse opens with a first-person legal formula: ha'iDoti ("I call as witnesses") governs two objects marked with 'et — hashaMayim ("the heavens") and ha'Aretz ("the earth") — both articulated as definite entities being summoned. The prepositional phrase vaChem ("against you", H9003+H9036) specifies that the testimony is directed against the addressee, plural in form (-khem).

The core of the verse presents two paired contrasts as direct objects of naTati ("I have set"): hachaYim vehaMavet ("the life and the death") and habberaKhah vehaqqelaLah ("the blessing and the curse"), both placed lefaNeikha ("before you", using the construct noun paneh, "face", H6440G, with a 2ms suffix). The repetition of the definite article on each noun in both pairs marks them as specific, known categories rather than abstract possibilities.

The sequential perfect uvaCharta ("and you shall choose") continues directly from naTati, forming a chain: having set the options, the text moves to the required action, "choosing," with bachaYim ("in the life") as its object, again preposition + article. The purpose clause is introduced by lema'an ("so that", H4616) governing the jussive techYeh ("you may live"), followed by the explicit subjects 'aTah ("you") vezar'eKha ("and your offspring", construct noun + 2ms suffix), extending the intended result beyond the addressee alone.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the imperative as ἔκλεξαι τὴν ζωὴν σύ ("choose the life, you"), making the pronoun σύ explicit and separate, where the Hebrew embeds the subject only in the verb form vaCharta. The LXX also uses ζῆς (present-tense-form) for techYeh, differing slightly in verbal aspect from the Hebrew jussive/imperfect construction. The Vulgate’s proposuerim ("I have proposed/set forth") renders naTati with a subjunctive perfect embedded in an indirect clause ("quod proposuerim vobis"), restructuring the Hebrew’s direct paratactic clause into a subordinate clause of content.