Deuteronomy 7:13

Summary

Deuteronomy 7:13 continues a sequence of promised blessings: love, blessing, and multiplication, extending to offspring, agricultural produce, and livestock, all set in the land promised by oath to the ancestors. The verse consists mainly of a chain of construct phrases ("fruit of," "grain of," "young of") governed by three sequential perfect verbs.

Key words

• 'aHevkha ("he will love you", H0157G) — qal sequential perfect; continues the verbal chain begun in the previous verse, carrying forward the same unnamed subject.
• veRakhkha ("he will bless you", H1288) — piel (intensive) sequential perfect, repeated twice in the verse (once for "you," once for "the fruit of your womb..."), marking two separate objects of blessing.
• hirBekha ("he will increase you", H7235A) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, the third verb in the initial triad of action.
• shegar-'alaFeikha ("the young of your cattle", H7698 + H0504) — construct noun chain; shegar specifically denotes offspring/issue of the herd, not the animals themselves.
• nishBa' ("he swore", H7650) — niphal perfect, the standard passive/reflexive form used for oath-formulas referring back to the ancestors.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a long chain of sequential perfects (va-, u-) attached to pronominal suffixes, a structure typical of promise or blessing sequences in Deuteronomy. The subject performing the actions ("he will love," "bless," "increase") is not named within this verse itself — the verb forms alone carry the third-person masculine subject, continuing from the discourse established earlier in the chapter. After the initial triad of verbs, the verse shifts to a second occurrence of veRakh ("he will bless") governing an extended list of construct chains: "fruit of your womb," "fruit of your ground," "your grain," "your new wine," "your fresh oil," "the young of your cattle," "the young ones of your flock." Each item is grammatically bound to the following noun in a construct relationship, producing a cumulative listing effect rather than a series of independent clauses. The verse closes with a relative clause using the niphal nishBa' ("he swore"), referring to an oath made to "your ancestors" ('avoTeikha, H0001G) concerning the land, followed by the infinitive tet ("to give," H5414G) marking purpose.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text does not name the subject of the verbs in this verse; the LXX explicitly supplies "Κύριος" ("the Lord") twice, clarifying who performs the loving, blessing, and swearing. The Vulgate likewise leaves the subject implicit through verb conjugation, similar to the Hebrew. For the livestock terms shegar-'alaFeikha ("young of your cattle") and 'ashteRot tzoNekha ("young ones of your flock"), the LXX renders these more generally as "βουκόλια τῶν βοῶν" ("herds of cattle") and "ποίμνια τῶν προβάτων" ("flocks of sheep"), without preserving the Hebrew's specific emphasis on offspring/increase; the Vulgate's "armentis, gregibus ovium" similarly generalizes to herds and flocks rather than their young.