Deuteronomy 7:4

Summary

The verse describes the anticipated consequence of intermarriage warned against in the preceding verse: someone will turn the addressee's son away from following Yehovah toward serving other gods, and this will cause Yehovah's anger to burn against the people, resulting in swift destruction.

Key words

• yasir ("he will turn aside", H5493H) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, 3rd person singular. Opens the conditional clause with ki- ("for/if") and sets the ongoing future frame for the whole sentence.
• 'avdu ("they will serve", H5647H) — qal sequential perfect, plural subject. It continues the time-frame set by yasir but shifts to a plural verb, even though the preceding noun binkha ("your son", H1121A) is grammatically singular.
• 'af ("anger of", H0639G) — masculine singular construct noun, syntactically bound to the following name, forming the phrase "anger of Yehovah."
• Yehovah (H3068G) — the tetragrammaton, grammatical subject of the verb charah ("it will burn", H2734).
• hishmidkha ("he will destroy you", H8045) — hiphil sequential perfect with 2nd person masculine singular suffix, the final link in the causative verb chain.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain: an initial imperfect verb (yasir) establishes a future/conditional sense, and three following verbs (ve'avdu, vecharah, vehishmidkha) are sequential perfects with vav, a common construction that continues the same future time-frame as a narrative sequence of consequences. Each step causally follows the previous: turning away leads to serving other gods, which leads to Yehovah's anger burning, which leads to destruction.

A notable grammatical feature is the shift in number: yasir is singular ("he will turn aside") and its object binkha ("your son") is also singular, yet the next verb ve'avdu ("they will serve") is plural. The singular noun functions with collective force, and the verb agreement moves to plural to reflect the sons collectively, though the noun itself never appears in plural form. The construct phrase 'af-Yehovah ("anger of Yehovah") places the divine name in a tightly bound genitive relation with "anger," a common idiom for indicating whose wrath is in view.

Differences between versions

The LXX and Vulgate render the second verb in the singular (λατρεύσει, "he/she will serve"; serviat, subjunctive singular), matching the singular subject of the first verb and producing a fully consistent singular sequence, unlike the Hebrew ve'avdu, which is plural. The modern translations BSB and SBLIBRE render the noun itself as plural ("your sons," "tus hijos"), which is not present in the Hebrew text where binkha is singular; this brings the noun in line with the plural verb, whereas the Hebrew maintains a singular noun with a plural verb.