Deuteronomy 7:18

Summary

Deuteronomy 7:18 instructs the addressee not to fear the nations mentioned in context, and commands a deliberate, intensive act of remembering what Yehovah did to Pharaoh and to Egypt. The verse pairs a prohibition with an emphatic positive command built on the same verbal root.

Key words

• lo' ("not", H3808) — negation combined with the imperfect verb to form a durative prohibition ("you must not be afraid," not a one-time refusal).
• ti.Ra' ("you must be afraid", H3372G) — qal imperfect 2nd person masculine singular, expressing ongoing or future fear that is being forbidden.
• za.Khor ("carefully ", H2142) — infinitive absolute of the same root as the following finite verb; it has no subject or tense of its own and functions to intensify the verb it precedes.
• tiz.Kor ("you will remember", H2142) — qal imperfect 2nd person masculine singular; paired with the infinitive absolute za.Khor it produces the emphatic sense "you will surely remember."
• 'a.Sah ("he did", H6213A) — qal perfect 3rd person masculine singular, marking a completed past action (what Yehovah did), contrasted with the imperfect verbs framing it.

What the text says

The verse opens with a negated imperfect, lo' ti.Ra' ("not you-must-be-afraid"), governing the prepositional phrase me.Hem ("from them", H9006/H9038), which points back to the nations discussed earlier in the chapter. This is followed immediately by the construction za.Khor tiz.Kor — an infinitive absolute doubled with a finite imperfect of the same root H2142 ("to remember"). In Biblical Hebrew this doubling pattern (infinitive absolute + finite verb of the same root) is a grammatical device that intensifies or emphasizes the finite verb's action; here it turns a simple "you will remember" into something closer to "you will surely/carefully remember."

The object of remembering is introduced by the relative particle 'a.Sher ("that which", H0834A) followed by the direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) and the qal perfect verb 'a.Sah ("he did", H6213A). The perfect aspect marks this as a completed action attributed to the subject Yehovah (H3068G) 'e.lo.Hei.kha ("God of you", H0430G construct + H9021 suffix). The action's recipients are marked with the preposition le ("to", H9005) twice: once for far.'Oh ("Pharaoh", H6547J) and once for khol-mitz.Ra.yim ("all Egypt", H3605 construct + H4714G), joined by the conjunction u ("and", H9002).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the doubled Hebrew construction za.Khor tiz.Kor as mneia mnesthese ("with remembrance you will remember"), preserving the same emphatic doubling pattern using a dative noun plus verb rather than infinitive absolute plus finite verb. The Vulgate simplifies this to a single imperative, recordare ("remember"), without reproducing the intensifying repetition present in the Hebrew and LXX. The Vulgate also renders the initial prohibition as noli metuere ("do not wish to fear"), an idiomatic Latin negative command, differing structurally from the Hebrew's negated imperfect construction.