Deuteronomy 32:17

Summary

The verse describes Israel sacrificing to shedim ("demons", H7700) instead of to Eloha ("God", H0433), to elohim ("gods", H0430J) that were unfamiliar and newly arrived, entities that the ancestors of the addressees had not previously related to. The verse uses a triple negation structure to stress the novelty and illegitimacy of these objects of sacrifice.

Key words

• yizbechu ("they sacrificed", H2076) — qal imperfect, though describing a completed act in past narrative context; imperfect forms in poetic Hebrew can carry past or habitual force.
• shedim ("demons", H7700) — masculine plural noun, the direct object of the sacrifice, contrasted with the singular Eloha that follows.
• Eloha ("God", H0433) — masculine singular form, distinct from the plural elohim two words later; the singular/plural contrast within the same verse is a deliberate structural feature.
• chadashim ("new", H2319H) — masculine plural adjective modifying the unnamed gods, marking them as recently arrived rather than ancestral.
• se'arum ("they had —— them", H8175C) — qal perfect with 3rd person plural suffix; the root שׂער is associated with dread/bristling, so the verb concerns an emotional or reverential response toward these gods by the ancestors, not merely cognitive awareness.

What the text says

The verse is built on three parallel negated clauses, each anchored by lo' ("not", H3808): (1) shedim, not Eloha; (2) elohim they had not yeda'u ("known", H3045); (3) new gods their ancestors had not se'aru ("——", H8175C) about/toward. This triple repetition of lo' creates a rhetorical accumulation, each clause reinforcing that the sacrificed entities stand outside the prior experience of the ancestors (avoteichem, "your ancestors", H0001G construct plural with 2nd person suffix H9026).

The alternation between Eloha (singular, H0433) and elohim (plural, H0430J) is grammatically marked: the text first denies a singular divine referent, then denies knowledge of a plural set of divine beings. The phrase miqqarov ba'u ("from near/recently they had come", H7138 + H0935G) uses a spatial-temporal adjective, "near," to indicate recency rather than proximity in the literal sense, paired with the perfect verb ba'u ("they had come") describing an already-completed arrival.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb se'arum (root H8175, associated with dread or bristling) is rendered variably across versions. The LXX text given renders the equivalent clause with ᾔδεισαν ("they had known"), aligning it with the earlier verb yeda'u rather than preserving a distinct semantic nuance of dread. The Vulgate uses non coluerunt ("did not worship/cultivate"), introducing a cultic verb absent from the Hebrew root's core sense. The English versions (BSB "did not fear," RV1909 "no habían temido") follow the dread/fear sense closer to the Hebrew root, while SBLIBRE ("no temían") also follows this same fear-based rendering, differing from both LXX and Vulgate.