Deuteronomy 5:13

Summary

Deuteronomy 5:13 instructs that labor is to be performed during a six-day period, using two sequential verb forms that together describe both the duration and completion of work. The verse forms part of the Sabbath command, setting up the contrast with the seventh day mentioned afterward.

Key words

• She.shet ("six", H8337) — construct form of "six," linking directly to the following noun ya.Mim to form the phrase "six of days."
• ya.Mim ("days", H3117G) — masculine plural noun, the counted unit governed by She.shet.
• ta.'a.Vod ("you will labor", H5647I) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular; expresses ongoing or future action, here framing the six-day span as a period of labor.
• 'a.Si.ta ("you will do", H6213A) — qal sequential perfect, second person masculine singular; continues the action begun by ta.'a.Vod, indicating completion or the resulting deed within that same timeframe.
• me.lakh.Te.kha ("your work", H4399 + H9021) — feminine singular noun in construct with the second-person suffix kha ("your"), naming the object that is worked upon.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the construct phrase She.shet yamim ("six of days"), which sets a temporal frame before any verb appears. This word order — time expression first — places emphasis on the six-day span itself, rather than on the act of laboring. The main verb ta.'a.Vod is a qal imperfect, a form that in Biblical Hebrew often carries habitual or durative force: it describes labor as something that continues across that period rather than a single completed act.

The vav on ve.'a.Si.ta is a narrative (sequential) vav attached to a perfect verb, a construction that continues the temporal or logical sequence set up by the preceding imperfect. Grammatically, this pairs ta.'a.Vod ("you will labor") with 'a.Si.ta ("you will do") as two aspects of the same instruction: sustained labor and its completed execution. The object of this second verb is kol-melakhtekha, literally "all of your work," where kol stands in construct with melakhtekha, itself a construct noun carrying the second-person possessive suffix kha. This chain — "all of the work of you" — expresses totality: the entirety of one's labor is to be finished within the six-day frame introduced at the start of the verse.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew construction with two distinct verbs, ta.'a.Vod (imperfect) and 'a.Si.ta (sequential perfect), is rendered in the LXX with two future-tense Greek verbs, ergᾷ ("you will work") and poiēseis ("you will do"), preserving the two-verb structure. The Vulgate similarly uses two verbs, operaberis and facies. The Hebrew kol-melakhtekha ("all of your work") appears in the LXX as panta ta erga sou ("all the works of you"), using a plural noun where the Hebrew has a singular collective noun melakha.