Deuteronomy 6:17

Summary

Deuteronomy 6:17 commands the audience to keep the commandments, testimonies, and statutes of Yehovah, using an emphatic Hebrew verb construction that stresses the seriousness of the obligation. The verse closes by noting that these instructions were commanded to "you" in the singular, even though the rest of the verse addresses the group in the plural.

Key words

• sha.mor ("certainly ", H8104J) — infinitive absolute placed before the finite verb; in Biblical Hebrew this doubling intensifies or underscores the verbal action, roughly "keep, indeed keep."
• tish.me.run ("you will keep", H8104G) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, carrying an ongoing/future nuance; the paragogic nun (H9013) attached to it adds emphasis without changing basic meaning.
• mitz.vot ("[the] commandments of", H4687) — feminine plural construct noun, opening a chain of three construct nouns (commandments, testimonies, statutes) all governed by the following divine name/pronoun.
• tzi.vah ("he has commanded", H6680) — piel perfect, 3rd masculine singular; the piel stem here intensifies the act of commanding, and the perfect marks it as a completed act.
• -kh ("you", H9031) — 2nd person masculine singular suffix attached to tzivvakh, contrasting with the plural forms used earlier in the verse.

What the text says

The verse opens with the infinitive absolute shamor followed by the finite verb tishmerun, a classic Hebrew construction where the infinitive reinforces the finite verb's action — conveying something like "you shall diligently keep" rather than a simple "keep." The paragogic nun on tishmerun is a stylistic emphatic marker common in Deuteronomy and does not add new grammatical information beyond reinforcing the plural imperfect form.

The object of this verb is a three-part construct chain: mitzvot ("commandments of"), edotav ("testimonies of," with the H9023 suffix "his"), and chuqqav ("statutes of," also with "his"). Each construct noun is linked to Yehovah, so structurally the verse presents three overlapping categories of instruction — commandments, testimonies, and statutes — all belonging to the same divine source, joined by ve- ("and", H9002) connectors.

The final clause, introduced by the relative particle asher ("which", H0834A), uses the piel perfect tzivvah ("he has commanded") with a singular object suffix -kh ("you"). This creates a grammatical shift: the verse begins addressing "you" in the plural (tishmerun, elohekhem) but ends with a singular "you" (tzivvakh), a pattern that appears elsewhere in Deuteronomy where plural and singular address alternate within the same passage.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the infinitive absolute + imperfect pair as phylassōn phylaxē ("keeping, you shall keep"), a participle plus subjunctive construction that mirrors the Hebrew's emphatic doubling but shifts the verbal mood from imperfect to subjunctive. The Vulgate simplifies this construction entirely into a single singular imperative, Custodi ("keep"), losing both the doubling and the plural address found in the Hebrew tishmerun. The Vulgate also renders chuqqav ("statutes of," H2706G) as cæremonias ("ceremonies"), a translation choice not reflected in the Hebrew noun's core sense of "statutes" or in the LXX's dikaiōmata ("righteous acts/ordinances").