Deuteronomy 8:14

Summary

The verse describes a moment when the heart becomes lifted up and the addressee forgets Yehovah his God — the one who brought him out of the land of Egypt, out of a house of slaves. The two main verbs continue a narrative sequence introduced by earlier verses in the chapter.

Key words

• Ram ("it will be lifted up", H7311A) — qal sequential perfect, third person masculine; the verb governing levav ("heart"), describing the heart's own rising action rather than an outside force acting on it.
• Levavekha ("your heart", H3824) — masculine singular noun in construct with the pronominal suffix kha ("your", H9021); grammatically the subject of ram, so the text presents the heart itself as becoming elevated.
• Shakhachta ("you will forget", H7911) — qal sequential perfect, second person masculine; continues the same narrative chain as ram, making forgetting the direct consequence of the heart's rising.
• Ha-motzi'akha ("the one bringing you out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) participle, masculine singular construct with suffix kha ("you"); modifies Elohekha ("your God") by identifying Yehovah through the ongoing action of having brought the addressee out.
• Beit avadim ("house of slaves", H1004B + H5650) — construct chain: beit ("house of") governs the plural noun avadim ("slaves"), forming a fixed phrase describing Egypt's status.

What the text says

The verse is built on two sequential perfect verbs, ve-ram ("and it will be lifted up") and ve-shakhachta ("and you will forget"), both attached by the narrative vav (ve, H9001) that chains this clause to what precedes it in the passage. The grammar places levavekha ("your heart") as the subject of the first verb, so the text describes the heart's elevation as an action the heart itself undergoes, not something explicitly caused by another agent within this clause. The second clause shifts to the addressee as subject: "you will forget Yehovah your God."

The object of forgetting, Yehovah Elohekha ("Yehovah your God"), is further specified by a participial clause: ha-motzi'akha ("the one bringing you out"), a hiphil participle marking Yehovah through the causative act of extraction from Egypt. This participle is followed by two parallel prepositional phrases built on construct chains — me-eretz Mitzrayim ("from the land of Egypt") and mi-beit avadim ("from a house of slaves") — both governed by the preposition min ("from", H9006), presenting Egypt first geographically and then through the descriptive term "house of slaves."

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders ve-shakhachta ("and you will forget") as "et non reminiscaris" ("and you will not remember"), a negated form rather than a direct verb of forgetting, though the resulting sense is similar. The LXX (Swete) uses ὑψωθῇς ("you may be lifted up") and ἐπιλάθῃ ("you may forget"), both subjunctive forms, which frame the actions as possibilities within a conditional construction, differing from the Hebrew's sequential perfect that presents the actions as part of a narrative chain.