Deuteronomy 6:3

Summary

The verse commands Israel to hear and carefully perform the commandments, promising that this will bring well-being and great increase. It closes by naming the content of what Yehovah, the God of the ancestors, had spoken: a land flowing with milk and honey.

Key words

• sha.ma'.Ta ("you will hear", H8085G) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain from previous verses; grammatically it functions as a command despite its "perfect" form.
• sha.mar.Ta ("you will take care", H8104J) — same sequential perfect pattern, paired with sha.ma'.Ta to form a two-part instruction: hear, then keep.
• tir.Bu ("you will increase", H7235A) — imperfect plural verb carrying the paragogic nun (H9013), a suffix that adds emphasis to the promised increase.
• za.Vat ("flowing of", H2100G) — a qal participle in construct form, linking grammatically to chalav ("milk", H2461) as "the one flowing of milk," a construct chain rather than an independent clause.
• 'a.Sher ("that/who", H0834A/H0834D) — the relative particle appears three times in the verse, each time introducing a different clause (result, purpose, comparison), structuring the verse's logic.

What the text says

The verse opens with two sequential perfects, sha.ma'.Ta ("you will hear") and sha.mar.Ta ("you will take care"), both grammatically continuing an ongoing narrative sequence rather than standing as isolated commands. The infinitive la'asot ("to do", H6213A) explains the purpose of "taking care" — care that results in performance. Two clauses beginning with 'asher follow: one stating the result of obedience ("that it will go well for you"), the other stating a further result marked by the emphatic paragogic nun on tir.Bu ("that you will increase exceedingly").

The final clause is introduced by ka'asher ("just as") and reports what Yehovah "spoke" (di.Ber, piel perfect, H1696I) to the ancestors. Here the Hebrew syntax is compressed: after "as Yehovah... spoke to you" comes directly eretz zavat chalav u'devash ("a land flowing with milk and honey") with no verb connecting the land to the verb "spoke." The land phrase stands in apposition, naming the content of what was spoken, without an explicit governing verb such as "give."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew leaves the connection between "spoke" and "land" implicit, without an explicit verb governing "land." The LXX supplies the infinitive δοῦναί ("to give") — "as the Lord... spoke, to give you a land flowing with milk and honey" — making explicit what the Hebrew leaves unstated. The Vulgate uses terram as the direct object of pollicitus est ("promised"), similarly supplying a governing verb-object relationship absent in the Hebrew's bare apposition. Some translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) instead treat the land phrase as locative ("in a land flowing with milk and honey"), attaching it to the earlier clause about increasing rather than to the verb of speaking.