Deuteronomy 7:14

Summary

The verse states that the addressee (Israel, singular "you") will be blessed above all other peoples, and that neither infertility among men and women nor among livestock will exist among them.

Key words

• ba.Rukh ("blessed", H1288) — qal passive participle, describing a state resulting from an action already performed on the subject, not an active verb.
• tih.Yeh ("you will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, indicating a future or ongoing state.
• 'a.Kar ("a sterile [male]", H6135) — masculine singular adjective, paired with its feminine counterpart to cover both sexes.
• 'a.ka.Rah ("a barren [female]", H6135) — feminine singular form of the same root, joined to the masculine by the conjunction va. ("and", H9002).
• v.hem.Te.kha ("your livestock", H0929 + H9021) — feminine singular noun in construct with the pronominal suffix "your", extending the statement of fertility beyond humans to animals.

What the text says

The sentence opens with ba.Rukh ("blessed", H1288) followed by tih.Yeh ("you will be", H1961), a passive participle plus an imperfect verb of being — a construction that expresses a state of blessing that will characterize the subject going forward. The comparison mi.kol-ha.'a.Mim ("more than all the peoples", H9006 + H3605 + H9009 + H5971A) uses the preposition H9006 ("more than") with a construct chain "all of the peoples," placing the addressee above every other nation in this respect.

The second clause is built on negation: lo'-yih.Yeh ("he will not be", H3808 + H1961), again the verb "to be" in the imperfect, this time negated and in third person. The subject of this negated existence is introduced through be.kha ("among you", H9003 + H9031), locating the absence of sterility specifically within the addressee's sphere. The text then lists what will not exist there: 'a.Kar ("a sterile [male]", H6135) and va.'a.ka.Rah ("and a barren [female]", H9002 + H6135) — the same root H6135 appears in both masculine and feminine forms, explicitly covering both sexes among humans. The final phrase, u.vi.v.hem.Te.kha ("and among your livestock", H9002 + H9003 + H0929 + H9021), extends the same negated condition to animals, using a construct noun with a second person suffix.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'a.Kar and 'a.ka.Rah as ἄγονος ("infertile") and στεῖρα ("barren female"), a distinction similar to the Hebrew's masculine/feminine pairing. The Vulgate uses a single phrase, "sterilis utriusque sexus" ("sterile of either sex"), collapsing the two Hebrew adjectives into one Latin expression followed by a clarifying phrase "tam in hominibus quam in gregibus tuis" ("both among men and among your flocks"), where the Hebrew simply lists 'a.Kar, 'a.ka.Rah, and behemtekha ("your livestock") in sequence without an explicit word for "men."