Deuteronomy 7:16

Summary

The verse instructs that the people whom Yehovah is delivering to Israel are to be consumed entirely, without pity, and that their gods must not be served, since doing so would become a snare.

Key words

• 'a.khal.Ta ("you will consume", H0398) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain from the preceding verses; expresses a completed future action tied to what came before.
• no.Ten ("[is] about to deliver up", H5414G) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing Yehovah as the one currently/continually giving the peoples into Israel's hand, an ongoing action rather than a single past event.
• ta.Chos ("it will look with pity", H2347) — qal imperfect, third person feminine, agreeing with 'ei.ne.kha ("your eye", H5869A + H9021); the imperfect marks this as a future or habitual prohibition when combined with the negation lo' (H3808).
• ta.'a.Vod ("you will serve", H5647H) — qal imperfect, second person masculine, parallel in form to ta.Chos, forming a second negated clause.
• mo.Kesh ("[will be] a snare", H4170) — masculine singular noun, the predicate of the final clause introduced by ki ("for", H3588A), naming the consequence of serving foreign gods.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a chain of verbal clauses linked by the narrative vav (H9001, H9002), continuing a sequence of instructions. The first clause, ve'akhalTa 'et kol ha'amim ("and you will consume all the peoples"), uses the object marker 'et (H0853) to mark kol ha'amim ("all the peoples", H3605 + H9009 + H5971A) as the direct object, followed by a relative clause identifying them as those asher Yehovah 'eloheikha noten lakh ("whom Yehovah your God is delivering to you"). The participle noten (H5414G) presents this delivering as an ongoing action attributed directly to Yehovah, rather than a single completed event.

The next two clauses use imperfect verb forms negated by lo' (H3808), a construction typically expressing prohibition or negative instruction extending into the future: lo tachos 'einkha 'aleihem ("your eye will not pity them") and velo ta'avod 'et 'elohei hem ("and you will not serve their gods"). The subject of the first prohibition is grammatically "your eye" ('einkha, H5869A + H9021), a body-part construction functioning idiomatically as the seat of compassion or pity. The final clause, introduced by ki (H3588A, "for/if"), states the reason for avoiding foreign worship: mokesh hu lakh ("it is a snare to you"), where mokesh (H4170) is a masculine singular predicate noun placed before the pronoun hu ("it", H1931).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders kol ha'amim ("all the peoples") as πάντα τὰ σκῦλα τῶν ἐθνῶν ("all the spoils of the nations"), introducing the notion of "spoils," which is not present in the Hebrew noun 'amim ("peoples", H5971A) itself. The Vulgate's daturus est ("is about to give") reflects the participle noten (H5414G) with a future-oriented periphrastic form, while the LXX's δίδωσίν ("gives") uses a present tense. The Vulgate's closing phrase ne sint in ruinam tui ("lest they be your ruin") expresses the ki mokesh hu lakh clause as a purpose/warning construction, differing from the Hebrew's direct declarative "it is a snare to you."