Deuteronomy 6:11

Summary

This verse continues a description (begun in the preceding verses) of a land filled with houses, wells, vineyards, and olive groves that the addressee did not build, dig, or plant. The verse closes with two sequential verbs announcing that the person will eat from these goods and be satisfied.

Key words

• asher ("which", H0834A) — the relative particle appears three times, each introducing a clause of negation that qualifies a preceding noun (houses, wells, vineyards/olive trees), creating a repeated rhetorical pattern of "X that you did not do."
• mille'ta ("you filled", H4390) — piel (intensive) perfect; the verb describes filling the houses with goods, and is negated by lo ("not", H3808) directly before it.
• chatzuvim ("dug out", H2672) — qal passive participle, masculine plural, describing the state of the wells (borot) as already excavated, independent of the following finite verb.
• chatzavta ("you dug", H2672) — same root as chatzuvim, but as a qal perfect finite verb; the text uses one root twice, first as a participle describing the wells' condition, then as a negated finite verb describing the addressee's lack of action.
• ve'akhalta ("and you will eat", H0398) — sequential (waw-consecutive) perfect, marking the shift from the series of negated relative clauses to the main narrative action that follows.

What the text says

The verse is built on a triple repetition of the pattern asher lo + perfect verb: "which you did not fill," "which you did not dig," "which you did not plant." Each clause negates an action tied to the object just named (houses, wells, vineyards and olive trees), emphasizing that these items came into the addressee's possession without the corresponding labor. Grammatically, the wells (borot, feminine plural) are described by a masculine plural participle (chatzuvim), an incongruity in gender agreement within the Hebrew text itself, though this does not affect the sense.

After the three negated clauses, the narrative vav on ve'akhalta ("and you will eat") and ve-sava'ta ("and you will be satisfied") shifts the verb form from simple perfect (describing past non-action) to sequential perfect (describing a resulting future action), linking the enjoyment of these goods to the sequence of statements that precede it.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mille'ta ("you filled") with ἐνέπλησας ("you filled"), matching the Hebrew sense of filling the houses with goods. The Vulgate instead uses exstruxisti ("you built"), shifting the negated action from filling the houses to constructing them, a divergence from both the Hebrew and the LXX at this point.