Deuteronomy 31:20

Summary

Yehovah predicts that after bringing Israel into the land promised to their ancestors, described as flowing with milk and honey, the people will eat, be satisfied, and grow fat. The text then states that they will turn to other gods, serve them, spurn Yehovah, and break his covenant.

Key words

• ki ("if", H3588A) — introduces the conditional/temporal clause that frames the whole prediction.
• avi'ennu ("I will bring", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) imperfect with a 3rd-person singular suffix ("him/it"); the causative form marks Yehovah as the one who actively brings the people, and the singular suffix treats Israel as one collective entity.
• zavat ("flowing of", H2100G) — qal participle, feminine singular construct; forms a construct chain with "milk and honey," describing the land's ongoing state rather than a completed action.
• panah ("it will turn", H6437G) — qal sequential perfect; opens the turning point of the narrative sequence, shifting from prosperity to apostasy.
• hefer ("it will break", H6565A) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect; the causative stem marks the people as actively nullifying the covenant, not merely failing to keep it.

What the text says

The verse is built as a single long sentence introduced by ki ("if/that", H3588A), followed by a causative verb, avi'ennu ("I will bring", H0935P), whose 3rd-person singular suffix refers to Israel as a collective "him." A relative clause, asher nishba'ti la-avotav ("which I swore to his ancestors", H0834A/H7650/H0001G), specifies the oath concerning the land. The land itself is described through a construct chain, zavat chalav u-devash ("flowing of milk and honey", H2100G/H2461/H1706), a participle-based description rather than a finite verb, presenting the land's fertility as an ongoing characteristic.

From ve-akhal ("and it will eat", H0398) onward, the text shifts into a chain of seven verbs joined by the narrative vav and marked as "sequential perfect": akhal, sava', dashen, panah, avadum, ni'atzuni, hefer. This grammatical chain links the actions into one continuous sequence of future events — eating leads to satisfaction, satisfaction to fatness, fatness to turning toward elohim acherim ("other gods", H0430J/H0312), turning to service, service to ni'atzuni ("they will spurn me", H5006, piel — an intensive form), and finally to breaking the covenant with the causative hefer ("it will break", H6565A). The piel stem of ni'atzuni gives the verb an intensive nuance beyond a simple qal "despise."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew and Vulgate keep the recipient singular and collective (avi'ennu, "eum"), while the LXX renders it in the plural (εἰσάξω... αὐτοὺς, "I will bring them"), also pluralizing "their fathers" (πατράσιν αὐτῶν) where the Hebrew has avotav ("his ancestors"). The LXX further adds a descriptive term, τὴν ἀγαθὴν ("the good [land]"), not present as a separate word in the Hebrew clause. For ni'atzuni ("they will spurn me", H5006), the LXX uses παροξυνοῦσίν ("they will provoke"), and the Vulgate uses "detrahentque mihi" ("they will detract from me"), both differing in nuance from the Hebrew's intensive "spurn."