Deuteronomy 8:19

Summary

Deuteronomy 8:19 states a conditional warning: if the addressee forgets Yehovah (H3068) and turns to serve and bow down to other gods, this is declared as testimony against the people, with a strong assertion that "perishing" will follow. The verse moves from a second-person singular condition to a plural audience in the final declaration.

Key words

• shakoach tishkach ("to forget" + "you will forget", H7911) — infinitive absolute followed by imperfect, a construction that intensifies the verb: the doubling marks certainty or emphasis on the act of forgetting, not merely its possibility.
• 'im ("if", H0518A) — conditional particle introducing the protasis that governs the chain of sequential perfects following it.
• ha'idoti ("I testify", H5749B) — hiphil perfect, causative stem, first-person singular; marks a completed, formal act of declaring/witnessing, distinct from the ongoing verbs describing the offense.
• avod to'vedun ("to perish" + "you will perish", H0006) — infinitive absolute + imperfect, the same intensifying pattern as shakoach tishkach, here reinforced further by the paragogic nun (H9013) on to'vedun, adding emphasis to the plural verb form.
• bakem ("against you", suffix H9036) — the pronominal suffix here is masculine plural, marking a shift in addressee from the singular forms used earlier in the verse.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav (H9001) attached to hayah (H1961), a sequential perfect that continues a chain begun earlier in the passage. The conditional particle 'im (H0518A) introduces the protasis, which is built from an infinitive absolute plus imperfect (shakoach tishkach, H7911) — a common Biblical Hebrew pattern that intensifies the verbal idea, here rendered in English translations as "if you ever forget" or "if you indeed forget." The subsequent actions — walking after other gods ('acharei 'elohim 'acherim), serving them ('avadta), and bowing down to them (hishtachavita) — are all sequential perfects (H1980N, H5647H, H7812), continuing the same grammatical chain as the initial condition, describing a sequence of escalating actions rather than three separate hypotheticals.

The declaration itself, ha'idoti bakem hayom ("I testify against you today"), uses a hiphil perfect (H5749B), a completed act distinct in aspect from the preceding conditional chain. Here the pronominal suffix on bakem (H9036) is plural, while the earlier verbs addressing the wrongdoing (tishkach, halakhta, 'avadta, hishtachavita) are singular. The final clause returns to the infinitive-absolute-plus-imperfect intensifying pattern (avod to'vedun, H0006), and adds the paragogic nun (H9013), a suffix that in Biblical Hebrew often carries additional emphasis, attached to the plural verb "you will perish."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the double Hebrew construction shakoach tishkach with ἐὰν λήθῃ ἐπιλάθῃ, a dative-plus-verb construction paralleling the Hebrew's emphatic doubling, and similarly renders avod to'vedun as ἀπωλίᾳ ἀπολεῖσθε, mirroring the intensifying pattern. The Vulgate, however, does not reproduce this doubling grammatically, translating the final clause as "omnino dispereas" — using the adverb omnino ("entirely") with a singular verb (dispereas, "you [sing.] perish"), where the Hebrew to'vedun is plural. The Vulgate thus maintains a singular addressee throughout, while the Hebrew shifts to plural forms (bakem, to'vedun) in the concluding declaration.