Deuteronomy 6:7

Summary

Deuteronomy 6:7 instructs a repeated, intensive verbal transmission of "them" (the preceding words/commandments) to one's children, and describes this speaking as happening continuously — at home, on the road, when lying down, and when rising. The verse structures daily life into four temporal moments during which this speech is to occur.

Key words

• shinnanTam ("you will repeat", H8150) — piel (intensive) stem of a root meaning "to sharpen," here functioning as a sequential perfect continuing the narrative chain; the intensive form conveys repeated, sharpened transmission rather than a single act.
• dibbarTa ("you will speak", H1696G) — piel sequential perfect, paired with shinnanTam, marking ongoing verbal action ("in them," referring back to the earlier-mentioned words).
• shivteKha ("your sitting", H3427) — qal infinitive construct with pronominal suffix, forming a temporal clause ("in your sitting/when you sit"), part of the fourfold merism of daily activity.
• lekhteKha ("your walking", H1980I) — qal infinitive construct with suffix, same temporal construction, referring to travel "on the road" (Derekh, H1870L).
• qumeKha ("your rising", H6965B) — qal infinitive construct with suffix, closing the pair "lying down / rising up," marking the full daily cycle.

What the text says

The verse opens with two verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001), both in the sequential perfect: shinnanTam ("you will repeat them", H8150) and dibbarTa ("you will speak", H1696G). These continue a chain of instructions from the preceding verses, with "them" (the pronominal suffix -m, H9038) referring back to unspecified prior content — presumably the words or commandments mentioned earlier in the passage, though this verse alone does not name them.

The remainder of the verse consists of four parallel prepositional phrases, each built from be- ("when/in", H9003) plus a qal infinitive construct plus a second-person pronominal suffix: "in your sitting" (shivteKha), "in your walking" (lekhteKha), "in your lying down" (shokhbekha), "in your rising" (qumeKha). This grammatical pattern — infinitive construct governed by a preposition — is a common Hebrew way of forming temporal clauses ("when you do X"), and the four phrases together form a merism, using two opposite pairs (sitting/walking, lying/rising) to indicate the entirety of daily activity rather than four isolated moments.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shinnanTam (H8150, "sharpen/repeat") as προβιβάσεις ("you will lead forward" or "instruct"), while the Vulgate uses narrabis ("you will tell/narrate") — both diverging from the Hebrew root's sense of sharpening or intensifying repetition. For dibbarTa (H1696G, "speak"), the LXX has λαλήσεις ("you will speak"), closer to the Hebrew, whereas the Vulgate's meditaberis ("you will meditate/ponder") introduces a reflective nuance not present in the Hebrew verb itself.