Deuteronomy 6:14

Summary

Deuteronomy 6:14 forbids following gods other than Yehovah, specifically identifying these as the gods worshiped by the peoples surrounding Israel. The verse uses emphatic plural verb forms and a partitive construction to stress both the prohibition and its object.

Key words

• teleKhun ("you will walk", H1980N) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, with the paragogic nun (H9013) attached, an archaic emphatic ending reinforcing the plural address to the community.
• acharei ("after", H0310A) — construct form of a plural noun functioning as a preposition, linking the verb of walking to its object, the gods.
• elohim acherim ("other gods", H0430J + H0312) — noun plus adjective, both masculine plural, naming the general category of forbidden deities.
• me-elohei ("from the gods of", H9006 + H0430J) — the preposition min ("from/any of") attached to the construct plural elohei, creating a partitive sense: "any among the gods of."
• sevivoteikhem ("around you", H5439G + H9036) — construct plural noun with 2nd person masculine plural suffix, literally "the surroundings of you," locating the peoples geographically.

What the text says

The verse opens with the negation lo (H3808) followed by teleKhun (H1980N), a qal imperfect verb carrying the paragogic nun, which in Biblical Hebrew often marks solemn or emphatic address, reinforcing the collective and binding nature of the prohibition on "you all." The verb governs the phrase acharei elohim acherim ("after other gods"), using the construct-like preposition acharei to describe the forbidden direction of movement — not physical walking, but devotion or allegiance.

The second half narrows the referent of "other gods" through the partitive me- attached to elohei, the construct plural of "gods." This creates the sense "any among the gods of," specifying that the "other gods" are precisely those belonging to ha-ammim ("the peoples", H5971A with definite article H9009). The relative particle asher (H0834A) introduces a clause describing these peoples as those sevivoteikhem — "around you" — using a construct plural noun with a pronominal suffix that expresses spatial proximity without a separate preposition for "around."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the phrase without repeating "gods": ἀπὸ τῶν ἐθνῶν τῶν περικύκλῳ ὑμῶν ("from the nations around you"), omitting the Hebrew's second occurrence of elohei ("gods of") and referring directly to "the nations" rather than "the gods of the nations." The Vulgate similarly compresses the construction as "deos alienos cunctarum gentium" ("strange gods of all the nations"), inserting cunctarum ("all/every"), a quantifier not present in the Hebrew text, which does not specify "all" the peoples but only those sevivoteikhem ("around you").