Ulangan 20:5

20:5 Moreover, the officers are to say to the troops, ¹  “Who among you ²  has built a new house and not dedicated ³  it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else ⁴  dedicate it.

Ulangan 25:7

25:7 But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she ⁵  must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!”

Ulangan 26:5

26:5 Then you must affirm before the Lord your God, “A wandering ⁶  Aramean ⁷  was my ancestor, ⁸  and he went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with a household few in number, ⁹  but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous people.

Ulangan 28:25

Curses by Defeat and Deportation

28:25 “The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror ¹⁰  to all the kingdoms of the earth.

[20:5]  ¹ tn Heb “people” (also in vv. 8, 9).

[20:5]  ² tn Heb “Who [is] the man” (also in vv. 6, 7, 8).

[20:5]  ³ tn The Hebrew term חָנַךְ (khanakh) occurs elsewhere only with respect to the dedication of Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs 8:63 = 2 Chr 7:5). There it has a religious connotation which, indeed, may be the case here as well. The noun form (חָנֻכָּה, khanukah) is associated with the consecration of the great temple altar (2 Chr 7:9) and of the postexilic wall of Jerusalem (Neh 12:27). In Maccabean times the festival of Hanukkah was introduced to celebrate the rededication of the temple following its desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (1 Macc 4:36-61).

[20:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “another man.”

[25:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister in law.” In the second instance the pronoun (“she”) has been used in the translation to avoid redundancy.

[26:5]  ⁶ tn Though the Hebrew term אָבַד (’avad) generally means “to perish” or the like (HALOT 2-3 s.v.; BDB 1-2 s.v.; cf. KJV “a Syrian ready to perish”), a meaning “to go astray” or “to be lost” is also attested. The ambivalence in the Hebrew text is reflected in the versions where LXX Vaticanus reads ἀπέβαλεν (apebalen, “lose”) for a possibly metathesized reading found in Alexandrinus, Ambrosianus, ἀπέλαβεν (apelaben, “receive”); others attest κατέλειπεν (kateleipen, “leave, abandon”). “Wandering” seems to suit best the contrast with the sedentary life Israel would enjoy in Canaan (v. 9) and is the meaning followed by many English versions.

[26:5]  ⁷ sn A wandering Aramean. This is a reference to Jacob whose mother Rebekah was an Aramean (Gen 24:10; 25:20, 26) and who himself lived in Aram for at least twenty years (Gen 31:41-42).

[26:5]  ⁸ tn Heb “father.”

[26:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “sojourned there few in number.” The words “with a household” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons and for clarity.

[28:25]  ¹⁰ tc The meaningless MT reading זַעֲוָה (za’avah) is clearly a transposition of the more commonly attested Hebrew noun זְוָעָה (zÿva’ah, “terror”).