TO DECLARE — perhaps; a verb in two verses of the Bible, and nobody is sure. He'emarta and he'emirkha stand in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, Deuteronomy 26:17 and 26:18: you have declared Jehovah today to be your God and Jehovah has declared you today to be his people. It is the causative of amar, to say, so the literal shape is 'to cause to say' — which is how the NWT 1984 renders it, 'induced to say'. ⭐ Whatever it means, the verse uses it in both directions with one word, Israel of Jehovah and Jehovah of Israel, each today: a mutual act, and the sentence's grammar is the point even where its lexicon is not. Rashi says there is no clear witness to the word elsewhere in Scripture and takes it as a term of setting apart — reported from him. ⚠ The shelf, with no parallel to lean on, renders it seven ways across thirteen witnesses: avouched (KJV, ASV), set up (Geneva), chosen (Douay, from the Latin), declared (NIV, TLB, RV60, NVI), induced to say (NWT 1984, TNM 1987), obtained a declaration (NWT 2013, TNM 2019), and the RV 1909's «ensalzado», exalted, an old guess that read the word off amir, a treetop. → first discussed at Deut 26:17