★★ The basket is a word this book owns, and it will be blessed and cursed before the book is out. Tene stands in four verses of the Hebrew Bible, every one of them in Deuteronomy: v2 and v4 here, and then twice in the next chapter but one, where the third of the blessings is blessed shall be your basket and your kneading-bowl (Deuteronomy 28:5, not yet on these pages) and the curses answer cursed shall be your basket and your kneading-bowl (28:17). The container a farmer carries to the altar in this chapter is the container the covenant will use to name his whole livelihood in the next. What goes in it is me-reshit, some of the first: reshit is the noun inside be-reshit, the first word of Genesis 1:1 (already on these pages), and the same two-word law is already in Exodus — reshit bikkurei admatekha, the first of the firstfruits of your ground, rendered the best of the firstfruits of your land at Exodus 23:19 and 34:26 (already on these pages). This chapter keeps the first and drops the word firstfruits altogether; the tractate of the Mishnah that regulates the ceremony is nonetheless called Bikkurim, firstfruits, after the word Exodus used and this chapter does not.

⭐ The phrase fruit of the ground is Cain’s, and this law is the correction of his offering. Peri ha-adamah stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, and the first of them is Genesis 4:3 (already on these pages), where Cain brought some of the fruit of the ground as an offering to Jehovah — the first offering anyone makes in the Bible. Abel’s, in the next verse, is some of the firstborn of his flock, and their fat portions: a first, and the best part. Cain’s has neither word, and the oldest readers of the story took the silence as the point — a reading reported here, not adopted, since Genesis itself gives no reason. What this chapter commands is Cain’s phrase with the missing word put back: some of the FIRST of all the fruit of the ground. The Hebrew reader who says the creed carries a basket that answers the first murderer’s altar. And it goes to the place that Jehovah your God chooses to make his name dwell there: le-shakken shemo stands in six verses of the Hebrew Bible, all of them in this book, from 12:11, in the code’s opening chapter, to this, its last law — the formula that began the code returns to close it.

★ The priest is the priest who is in those days, and the farmer tells him I declare with the verb that named the Passover night. Asher yihyeh ba-yamim ha-hem is the formula of 17:9, the judge who is in those days — the book’s way of saying that whoever holds the office when you arrive is the one you go to, and that the law is being written for a time its writer will not see. Higgadti ha-yom, I declare today: the verb is nagad, to tell, and its causative is the word of Exodus 13:8 (already on these pages), you shall tell your son on that day — ve-higgadta — from which the Passover Haggadah takes its name. The Mishnah (Pesachim 10:4) has the father at the seder expound from ‘a wandering Aramean was my father’ until he finishes the whole passage, so the creed of v5–9 became the text the Haggadah is built around — a tradition reported from the Mishnah, whose wording this project has not independently verified. The declaration is made to Jehovah YOUR God, said by the farmer to the priest, as though the God were the priest’s and not yet the speaker’s; by v14 the same man will say Jehovah MY God. Whether that is grammar or theology the Hebrew does not say.

⚠ The shelf cannot agree what the farmer does at v3, and two versions lose the ground. The KJV, ASV and Douay read ‘I profess this day’; the Geneva ‘I acknowledge this day’; the NIV ‘I declare today’ and the NWT 2013 ‘Today I am reporting’, where the NWT 1984 reads ‘I must report today’; the TLB ‘This gift is my acknowledgment’, folding v2 and v3 into one sentence. The RV 1909 reads «Reconozco hoy», the RV60 «Declaro hoy», the NVI «Hoy declaro», the TNM 1987 «Tengo que entregar informe hoy» and the TNM 2019 «Hoy declaro». On v2 the KJV and Geneva read ‘the first of all the fruit of the earth’, the ASV ‘the fruit of the ground’, the NWT 1984 ‘the fruitage of the soil’, the NIV ‘all that you produce from the soil’; the Douay reads ‘the first of all thy fruits’ and the TLB ‘the first sample from each annual harvest’, neither of them printing the ground that Cain’s phrase turns on. The RV 1909 reads «las primicias de todos los frutos de la tierra» and the TNM 1987 «las primicias de todos los frutos del terreno»; the NVI «las primicias de todo lo que produzca la tierra».

★★ Three words, one verse, and the first of them is a word Genesis gives only to Laban’s family. Arami oved avi stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible. In the Torah, Aramean is otherwise the label of two men: Bethuel and Laban, Bethuel the Aramean and Laban the Aramean, at Genesis 25:20, 28:5, 31:20 and 31:24 (all already on these pages) — Jacob’s grandfather and his uncle, his mother’s father and his wives’ father. The father of the creed is not named. If he is Jacob, as the oldest tradition reads him, then a man whose mother was an Aramean’s daughter, who married two Arameans and served an Aramean twenty years (31:41) is being called by the family he married into — and every Israelite farmer, forever, is made to say that his nation began as a foreigner. It is the one verse in the Bible in which Israel calls its own father an Aramean.

⭐ The second word is lost, or perishing, and in this book it is the word for what Israel will be if it forgets. Oved is the participle of avad, and the verb runs two ways. It is the word for a strayed animal: 22:3 (already on these pages) says anything of your brother’s that is lost with it, and Psalm 119:176 (not yet on these pages) says I have strayed like a lost sheep with the same participle — seh oved, in one verse of the Hebrew Bible, while Jeremiah 50:6 (not yet on these pages) calls the whole nation lost sheep. That is the sense behind wandering. But in Deuteronomy the verb is almost always the other thing: you shall surely perish at 4:26 and 8:19, so shall you perish at 8:20, you shall perish quickly at 11:17 (all already on these pages), and surely perish again at 30:18 — the sentence hung over the people if they forget Jehovah. So the creed opens with the father in the condition the book keeps threatening the children with — and that is the sense behind ready to perish. Both are in the word; this translation prints the sheep and leaves the threat to the note. A third reading is older than either English one: the Aramaic Targum takes Arami as Laban and oved as something done to the father — Laban the Aramean sought to destroy my father — the reading the Passover Haggadah expounds, reported here from the tradition and not adopted, since the Hebrew participle is intransitive. Jerome’s Latin reads the same way, which is why the Douay alone on the shelf reads ‘The Syrian pursued my father’: the one English in which the Aramean is not the father but his enemy.

★ The shelf splits seven to four on the word, both Watch Tower revisions crossed over, and one version made him hungry. The KJV and ASV read ‘A Syrian ready to perish was my father’; the Geneva ‘A Syrian was my father, who being ready to perish for hunger, went down into Egypt’, supplying the hunger; the NWT 1984 ‘My father was a perishing Syrian’, which its NWT 2013 revises to ‘My father was a wandering’ Aramaean; the NIV ‘My father was a wandering Aramean’; the TLB ‘My ancestors were migrant Arameans who went to Egypt for refuge’, a plural and a motive. The RV 1909 reads «Un Siro á punto de perecer fué mi padre» and the RV60 «Un arameo a punto de perecer»; the TNM 1987 «Mi padre era un sirio a punto de perecer» and the TNM 2019 «un arameo errante»; the NVI «Mi padre fue un arameo errante». Seven of the thirteen make him perish, four make him wander, one makes him a migrant, and one, the Douay, makes him the victim of a pursuit. And seven say Syrian where six say Aramean: the two Watch Tower revisions and the Reina-Valera’s each moved from the old name to the new.

⭐ He went down to Egypt and sojourned there is Abram’s sentence before it is Jacob’s, and the numbers are Pharaoh’s. Va-yered Mitsraymah va-yagor sham: at Genesis 12:10 (already on these pages) Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, va-yered Avram Mitsraymah lagur sham — the same going-down and the same sojourning, a generation before Jacob, so that the creed’s unnamed father fits the first patriarch’s words as well as the third’s. Jacob’s sons say it too, to Pharaoh, we have come to sojourn in the land (47:4). Few in number, bi-mtei me’at: the phrase stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, this one and Deuteronomy 28:62 (not yet on these pages), where the curse turns it round — you shall be left few in number, instead of being as the stars of the heavens. And there he became a great nation pays the promise God made Jacob on the road down, I will make you into a great nation there (Genesis 46:3, already on these pages) — sham, there, in both. Great, mighty and numerous: the last two are Pharaoh’s own words at Exodus 1:9 (already on these pages), more numerous and mightier than we, and atsum va-rav stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one, and 9:14 (already on these pages), where Jehovah offers to destroy Israel after the calf and make of Moses a nation mightier and more numerous than they. The nation God once proposed to replace Israel with is, in the creed, what Israel says it became.

★ Numbers 20 already said this creed to the king of Edom, in fewer words and with a messenger this chapter leaves out. Numbers 20:15–16 (already on these pages) has Israel’s envoys tell Edom our fathers went down to Egypt … and Egypt dealt badly with us and with our fathers; and we cried out to Jehovah, and he heard our voice and sent a messenger and brought us out from Egypt. Va-nits’aq, and we cried out, stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, that one and v7; the did evil to us of v6 is the same verb as Kadesh’s dealt badly with us. The creed keeps the crying and the hearing and drops the messenger: here Jehovah brought us out, with no one between. The rest of the Egypt verses are made of Exodus. Avodah qashah, hard service, stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible — Exodus 1:14, 6:9 (both already on these pages) and this one; afflicted us is the verb Pharaoh’s taskmasters were set to afflict them with (Exodus 1:11); and our affliction … our oppression are the two nouns of Jehovah’s own speech at the bush, I have surely seen the affliction of my people and I have also seen the oppression with which Egypt oppresses them (Exodus 3:7, 3:9, already on these pages). The two nouns our affliction and our oppression stand together in two verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one, and Psalm 44:25 (not yet on these pages; 44:24 in English numbering), where a psalm in a lost war throws the creed’s words back — why do you forget our affliction and our oppression? Then the exodus formula in full: a strong hand and an outstretched arm (4:34, 5:15, 7:19, 11:2, already on these pages), great terror where 4:34 had great terrors, signs and wonders as at 6:22. The creed is a mosaic, and every tile can be found on these pages.

⭐ This place is the sanctuary, and the bow is the one this book commands. The farmer standing at the altar says Jehovah brought us to this place before he says gave us this land — the place he is standing in stands for the country. Then ve-hishtachavita, and you shall bow down: the form stands in five verses in this book, and four of them are warnings — lest you bow down to the sun and the moon and the stars at 4:19, to other gods at 8:19 and 11:16 (already on these pages) and, in a chapter not yet on these pages, 30:17. In any form the verb stands in eight verses in this book, and the other seven are all of other gods — the commandment itself at 5:9, the idolater of 17:3, the apostate generation of 29:25. This is the one place Deuteronomy tells Israel to bow to Jehovah, and it is over a basket of fruit. V11 ends the liturgy where the book ends its sanctuary meals, in rejoicing (12:7, 16:11), and with the two who have no land of their own to bring firstfruits from, the Levite and the stranger, invited to the farmer’s.

⚠ Two versions merge the Egypt verses, the Douay gives the multitude no number, and the shelf cannot decide whether the terror was God’s or Egypt’s. The TLB prints v6 and v7 as one sentence, ‘The Egyptians mistreated us and we cried to the Lord God’, and gives v8 ‘mighty miracles and a powerful hand’ for the hand and the arm; the Douay reads ‘grew into a nation great and strong and of an infinite multitude’ at v5, an infinity its Latin supplied for the Hebrew’s plain numerous, and ‘most grievous burdens’ at v6 for the hard service. On v8 the KJV, ASV and Geneva read ‘with great terribleness’, the Douay and NIV ‘with great terror’, the NWT 1984 ‘with great fearsomeness’ and the NWT 2013 ‘with terrifying deeds’, the TLB ‘great and awesome miracles before the Egyptians’; the RV 1909 and RV60 read «con grande espanto», the TNM 1987 «con gran aterramiento», the TNM 2019 «con actos aterradores», and the NVI «con señales, prodigios y milagros que provocaron gran terror», moving the terror to the end and making it an effect. On the sojourning the KJV reads ‘sojourned there with a few’, the ASV ‘sojourned there, few in number’, the NWT 1984 ‘to reside there as an alien with very few in number’, the NIV ‘went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there’; the RV 1909 «peregrinó allá con pocos hombres», the RV60 «habitó allí con pocos hombres», dropping the sojourner, the NVI «descendió a Egipto con poca gente».

★★ This is the verse Deuteronomy 14 was waiting for, and it names the year. 14:28–29 (already on these pages) said at the end of three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your yield in that year and gave it to the Levite, the stranger, the orphan and the widow; this verse calls that year by a name that stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible, the third year, the year of the tithe, and settles what at the end of three years meant — the third year of each cycle, not every third harvest’s end. The four eaters are the same four, in the same order, and the verb is the same too: they eat within your gates and are satisfied. What is new is that the giver must say so. V13–15 put a set text in his mouth: not a vow to keep a law, but a report, made before Jehovah, that he has kept it — a confession of obedience, where the confessions a reader expects are of sin.

⭐ I have cleared out the holy portion from the house uses the verb this book keeps for burning out the evil. Bi’arti is ba’ar, and in this book the second-person form of it stands in ten verses, every one of them a sentence: burn out the evil from your midst nine times, from 13:6 to 24:7, and burn out the innocent blood from Israel at 19:13 (all already on these pages). Here the same verb is said in the first person of the tithe: the holy portion leaves the house by the verb a criminal leaves the camp by, and then v14 uses it a second time, I have not cleared out any of it while unclean. Whether the fire is really in the word is disputed, as the dictionary entry says; what is not disputed is that Deuteronomy uses one verb for removing the wicked and removing the tithe, and that this is the one time it is holy. The KJV reads ‘I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house’, the ASV ‘I have put away the hallowed things’, the Geneva ‘I have brought the hallowed thing out of mine house’, the Douay ‘I have taken that which was sanctified out of my house’, the NWT 1984 ‘I have cleared away what is holy from the house’, the NIV ‘I have removed from my house the sacred portion’; the TLB reads ‘I have given all of my tithes’, with no house and no verb of removal at all. The RV 1909 and RV60 read «he sacado lo consagrado de mi casa», the NVI «he retirado de mi casa la porción consagrada», the TNM 1987 «He eliminado lo que es santo de la casa» and the TNM 2019 «He sacado la porción santa de mi casa».

★ The three denials are about death, and the first of them is Rachel’s word. Lo akhalti ve-oni mimmennu, I have not eaten of it in my mourning: on is the noun Rachel dies on — Ben-oni, son of my sorrow, at Genesis 35:18 (already on these pages), the name Jacob would not let stand — and it is the word of Hosea 9:4 (not yet on these pages), their sacrifices shall be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat it shall be unclean. A house with a death in it was unclean, and food in it with it; the tithe eaten there would be holy food defiled. Nor given any of it for the dead, la-met: the same two words as 14:1 (already on these pages), you shall not put a bald patch between your eyes for the dead, and the practice behind them is the one Psalm 106:28 (not yet on these pages) names when it says Israel at Peor ate the sacrifices of the dead — food set out for or beside the dead, a rite the whole ancient world knew and this oath renounces. Three ways the holy tithe could have touched death, and the farmer swears to all three that it did not. Then I have not forgotten, lo shakachti — and lo shakachti stands in seven verses of the Hebrew Bible, this one and six in Psalm 119 (not yet on these pages), whose last verse is the one that joins this chapter’s two liturgies: I have strayed like a LOST sheep; seek your servant, for I have NOT FORGOTTEN your commandments (119:176). The wandering father of v5 and the tithe-payer’s oath of v13, in one line of a psalm.

⭐ Look down is the verb for looking out of a window, and in the Torah God has done it once before — at Egypt’s camp, to destroy it. Hashqiphah, the imperative with its long ending, stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible. The verb shaqaph is what Abimelech does through a window at Genesis 26:8 (already on these pages), what Sisera’s mother does (Judges 5:28), what Michal does as the ark comes in and Jezebel does as Jehu rides up (2 Samuel 6:16, 2 Kings 9:30; none of the three yet on these pages) — a looking out from a frame, down at a scene. Heaven is the window here. With God as its subject the Torah uses it once before this: at Exodus 14:24 (already on these pages), Jehovah looked down on the camp of Egypt through the pillar of fire and cloud, and threw the camp of Egypt into confusion; and the men who left Abraham’s tent looked down over the face of Sodom the same way (Genesis 18:16). The rabbis noticed: the Sifre’s saying, repeated by Rashi at this verse, is that every hashqafah in Scripture is for harm except this one, which the gift to the poor turns to blessing — a reading reported, not adopted, and true of the Torah’s lookings-down at Sodom and at Egypt, though Psalm 102:20 (not yet on these pages; 102:19 in English) already has him look down from his holy height to hear a prisoner groan. Your holy dwelling, me’on qodshekha: with his instead of your, the phrase stands in four verses of the Hebrew Bible, and two of them are on these pages — Jehovah roars from on high, and raises his voice from his holy habitation at Jeremiah 25:30, and he has roused himself from his holy dwelling at Zechariah 2:17 (2:13 in English). The fourth, 2 Chronicles 30:27 (not yet on these pages), is the answer to this prayer: the priests bless the people at Hezekiah’s Passover and their prayer came to his holy dwelling, to heaven — the same two nouns, the request of this verse arriving.

⚠ The Douay spends the tithe on funerals, the TLB moves the mourning into a parenthesis, and the shelf puts heaven in three different places. On v14 the KJV reads ‘neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor given ought thereof for the dead’; the ASV ‘neither have I put away thereof, being unclean, nor given thereof for the dead’; the Geneva ‘nor suffered ought to perish through uncleanness’; the Douay ‘nor separated them for any uncleanness, nor spent any thing of them in funerals’; the NWT 1984 ‘nor have I removed any of it while unclean, nor have I given any of it for anyone dead’; the NIV ‘nor have I offered any of it to the dead’; the TLB ‘I have not touched the tithe while I was ceremonially defiled (for instance, while I was in mourning), nor have I offered any of it to the dead’. The RV 1909 reads «ni de ello he dado para mortuorio», the RV60 «ni de ello he ofrecido a los muertos», the NVI «ni se la ofrecí a los muertos», the TNM 1987 «ni he dado parte de ello para algún muerto». On v15 the KJV and ASV read ‘Look down from thy holy habitation, from heaven’, the Geneva ‘from thine holy habitation, even from heaven’, the NWT 1984 ‘Do look down from your holy dwelling, the heavens’, the NIV ‘Look down from heaven, your holy dwelling place’, the TLB ‘Look down from your holy home in heaven’, and the Douay ‘Look from thy sanctuary, and thy high habitation of heaven’, a sanctuary the Hebrew does not have; the RV 1909 reads «Mira desde la morada de tu santidad, desde el cielo», the RV60 «Mira desde tu morada santa», the NVI «Mira desde el cielo, desde el santo lugar donde resides», the TNM 1987 «Mira, sí, desde tu santa morada, los cielos».

★★ The law code that opened at 12:1 closes here, with the same words and a whole heart. 12:1 (already on these pages) began these are the statutes and the judgments that you shall keep to do; v16 ends these statutes and the judgments … you shall keep and do them, and adds what the opening did not, with all your heart and with all your soul. The phrase stands in seven verses of the Hebrew Bible, all of them in this book — 4:29, 6:5, 10:12 (already on these pages), this one, and three in chapter 30 — and this is the only one of the seven attached to the statutes and the judgments rather than to Jehovah himself — the other six seek him, love him, serve him, return to him or listen to his voice with it. The whole code of chapters 12–26 is put, at its last line, under the Shema’s clause. This day, ha-yom, then rings three times in three verses: commanded this day, declared today, declared today.

⭐ The verb of v17 and v18 exists nowhere else, and nobody knows what it means. He’emarta and he’emirkha stand in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, these two: the causative of amar, to say, used once of Israel with Jehovah as its object and once of Jehovah with Israel as its object, each today, each followed by the same construction, to be … for. Whatever it means, it is done in both directions in one breath — a mutual act with one verb, which is the sentence’s whole grammar. Rashi says outright that there is no clear witness to the word anywhere in Scripture and that it seems to him a term of setting apart — reported here from him, not verified beyond it. The shelf, having no parallel to lean on, guesses seven ways. The KJV and ASV read ‘Thou hast avouched’ — the ASV in full ‘Thou hast avouched Jehovah this day to be thy God’ — an old legal word for acknowledging a thing as one’s own; the Geneva ‘Thou hast set up’; the Douay ‘Thou hast chosen’, the Latin’s elegisti; the NIV and TLB ‘You have declared this day’ and ‘You have declared today’; the NWT 1984 ‘Jehovah you have induced to say today that he will become your God’, reading the causative literally, which its NWT 2013 smooths to ‘Today you have obtained Jehovah’s declaration’. The RV 1909 reads «A Jehová has ensalzado hoy» — exalted, an old guess that reads the word off amir, a treetop — and the RV60 revises it to «Has declarado solemnemente hoy»; the NVI «Hoy has declarado»; the TNM 1987 «Has inducido a Jehová a decir hoy» and the TNM 2019 «Hoy has conseguido que Jehová se comprometa». Avouched, set up, chosen, declared, induced to say, obtained a declaration, exalted: seven renderings across thirteen witnesses, for a verb the text uses twice and then never again.

★ A people, a treasured possession is Sinai’s offer, accepted, and this is the last time the book says it. Am segullah stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible, all in Deuteronomy: 7:6, 14:2 (already on these pages) and this. Behind all three is Exodus 19:5 (already on these pages), where the word was first offered with a condition in front of it — if you will indeed listen to my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples — and v17 closes on exactly Sinai’s condition, and listen to his voice, before v18 grants the word. The offer of Exodus 19 and its acceptance are forty years and two whole books apart, and the acceptance is worded so that a reader who knows the offer hears it answered clause by clause: Sinai’s holy nation (19:6) has become a holy people, am qadosh, which stands in five verses in this book — 7:6, 14:2, 14:21, v19 and 28:9. High above all the nations that he has made will be said again two chapters on, as the first blessing (28:1, not yet on these pages).

⭐ For praise and for a name and for glory is Aaron’s wardrobe, and Jeremiah will quote the whole sentence back. The three nouns together stand in one verse of the Hebrew Bible. The last of them, tif’eret, is the word Aaron’s vestments are made for glory and for beauty with at Exodus 28:2 (already on these pages): a nation is here dressed in the high priest’s second adjective. Jeremiah 13:11 (not yet on these pages) takes all of it — to be to me a people, and a name, and a praise, and a glory — and adds that they did not listen; Zephaniah 3:19–20 (not yet on these pages) gives the lame and the outcast a praise and a name. Who the praise is for is the shelf’s question. The KJV reads ‘in praise, and in name, and in honour’ and the ASV ‘in praise, and in name, and in honor’, the Geneva ‘in praise, and in name, and in glory’, the NIV ‘in praise, fame and honor’, the TLB ‘praise, honor, and renown’, the NWT 1984 ‘praise and reputation and beauty’, keeping Aaron’s word, which the NWT 2013 turns to ‘praise and fame and glory’; and the Douay reads ‘to his own praise, and name, and glory’, the Latin’s suam making the praise God’s, where every other version on both shelves leaves it Israel’s. The RV 1909 reads «para loor, y fama, y gloria» and the RV60 «para loor y fama y gloria», the NVI «para que seas alabado y recibas fama y honra», the TNM 1987 «alabanza y reputación y hermosura». And on v18 the KJV and Douay read ‘his peculiar people’, the Geneva ‘a precious people’, the ASV ‘a people for his own possession’, the NIV ‘his treasured possession’, the NWT 1984 ‘a special property’; the RV 1909 «su peculiar pueblo», the RV60 «de su exclusiva posesión», the NVI «su propiedad exclusiva», the TNM 1987 «una propiedad especial».