Deuteronomy 6:19

Summary

This verse continues the purpose clause begun in the preceding verse: Israel is to act rightly so that Yehovah will drive out all their enemies from before them. The clause closes by anchoring this outcome in Yehovah's own prior spoken promise.

Key words

• hadof ("drive out", H1920) — Qal infinitive with the prefixed preposition la ("to"), forming a purpose/result clause: "in order to drive out" or "so that [one] drives out."
• oyeveikha ("your enemies", H0341) — a Qal participle ("the ones being hostile") functioning as a noun, in construct plural form with the 2nd person masculine suffix "your."
• panekha ("your face/before you", H6440) — masculine plural construct noun with suffix, used idiomatically with the preposition mi ("from") to mean "from before you," i.e., "out of your presence/path."
• diber ("he has spoken", H1696) — Piel perfect, marking a completed, intensified act of speaking; the verb stem itself (Piel) often carries a sense of forceful or official declaration rather than casual talk.
• Yehovah (H3068) — the divine name, appearing as the explicit subject of diber, identifying who made the prior spoken statement.

What the text says

The verse has no independent finite main verb of its own; it depends grammatically on what precedes it, expressed here through the infinitive hadof ("to drive out") governed by the preposition la. This construction in Biblical Hebrew commonly expresses purpose or consequence — the action being enabled or intended by whatever condition was stated earlier. The object of the driving-out is marked with the untranslatable direct object marker 'et (H0853) followed by kol ("all", H3605) in construct with oyeveikha, so structurally it reads "all of-your-enemies," an intensifying totalizing phrase.

The phrase mi-panekha ("from your face") is a spatial idiom meaning "out of your presence" or "away from before you," rendered in English as "before you," though literally it involves the noun paneh ("face") in construct plural.

The closing comparative clause ka'asher diber Yehovah ("as Yehovah has spoken") uses the Piel perfect diber, indicating a completed act of declaration attributed directly to Yehovah, syntactically confirming that the driving-out described matches an earlier utterance from Yehovah, without further specifying its content within this verse.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders hadof ("drive out") as deleret ("might destroy" or "blot out"), a different semantic emphasis than removal/expulsion found in the Hebrew and in the LXX's ἐκδιῶξαι ("to drive out/expel"), which more closely parallels the Hebrew verb. Additionally, the Vulgate's closing clause sicut locutus est ("as he has spoken") omits the explicit subject "Yehovah" found in the Hebrew and in the LXX's Κύριος ("Lord").