Deuteronomy 7:2

Summary

The verse continues a legal instruction concerning nations that Yehovah will hand over to Israel. It commands total destruction of these peoples, prohibits making any covenant with them, and forbids showing them favor.

Key words

• netanam ("he will deliver up", H5414G) — qal sequential perfect with 3mp suffix "them"; continues the narrative chain begun in v.1, indicating a future action that follows logically from Yehovah's prior acts.
• hacharem tacharim ("certainly to totally destroy" / "you will totally destroy", H2763A) — the infinitive absolute hacharem paired with the imperfect tacharim from the same root; this doubling intensifies the verb, a common Hebrew construction that grammatical glosses render as "certainly destroy."
• tikhrot ("you will make", H3772H) — qal imperfect, literally "you will cut," the standard Hebrew idiom for making a covenant (berit, "a covenant", H1285), since covenants were "cut."
• techanem ("you will show favor to", H2603A) — qal imperfect with 3mp suffix; the root relates to grace/favor, here negated to forbid any merciful treatment.
• berit ("a covenant", H1285) — feminine singular noun, direct object of tikhrot, forming the fixed phrase "to cut a covenant."

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of sequential perfects and imperfects linked by the narrative vav (H9001/H9002), a typical structure in Hebrew legal-narrative prose where one action follows from another: Yehovah "delivers" (netanam) the nations "before your face" (lefaneikha, from panim, H6440G, construct plural "face of"), then "you will strike" (hikkita, hiphil of H5221) them. The infinitive absolute construction hacharem tacharim intensifies the destruction command beyond what a single verb form would convey — the doubling functions similarly to an emphatic adverb, though English and other translations typically render it simply as "utterly destroy" or "totally destroy," losing the doubling itself.

The final two clauses use parallel negated imperfects: lo tikhrot lahem berit ("you will not cut for them a covenant") and velo techanem ("and you will not show favor to them"). The verb tikhrot ("you will make", H3772H) reflects the idiom of "cutting" a covenant, a detail not visible in translations that render it neutrally as "make." The suffixed pronouns (-m, H9038) attached to nearly every verb keep the third-person plural referent ("them," the nations of v.1) continuously present throughout the sentence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hacharem tacharim as aphanismō aphanieis ("with destruction you will destroy"), preserving a similar doubling pattern to the Hebrew infinitive absolute construction. The Vulgate simplifies this to "usque ad internecionem" ("to utter destruction"), losing the verbal doubling and expressing it instead through a prepositional phrase. The Vulgate also renders techanem as "misereberis" ("you will pity"), while the LXX uses "ἐλεήσητε" ("you show mercy") with a mē negation, both conveying the same prohibition through different grammatical mood (indicative future vs. subjunctive).