2 Chronicles 7:19

NET Bible® (New English Translation)

“But if you people ever turn away from me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep, and decide to serve and worship other gods,

📖 Grammatical Analysis

Original Text

וְאִם־תְּשׁוּב֣וּן אַתֶּ֔ם וַעֲזַבְתֶּם֙ חֻקּוֹתַ֣י וּמִצְוֺתַ֔י אֲשֶׁ֥ר נָתַ֖תִּי לִפְנֵיכֶ֑ם וַהֲלַכְתֶּ֗ם וַעֲבַדְתֶּם֙ אֱלֹהִ֣ים אֲחֵרִ֔ים וְהִשְׁתַּחֲוִיתֶ֖ם לָהֶֽם׃

Transliteration

But if wə-ʾim- təšûḇûn you ʾattem wa- ʿăzaḇtem my statutes ḥuqqôṯay û- my commandments miṣwōṯay ʾăšer nāṯattî before lipənêḵem wa- hălaḵtem wa- ʿăḇaḏtem ʾĕlōhîm ʾăḥērîm wə- hištaḥăwîṯem to them lāhem.

Grammar Details

• *wə-ʾim-*: conjunction with conditional particle - 'but if'
• *təšûḇûn*: qal imperfect, 2nd masculine plural - 'you turn back/away'
• *ʾattem*: personal pronoun, 2nd masculine plural - 'you'
• *wa-*: consecutive conjunction - 'and'
• *ʿăzaḇtem*: qal perfect, 2nd masculine plural - 'you forsake'
• *ḥuqqôṯay*: noun, feminine plural construct with 1st singular suffix - 'my statutes'
• *û-*: conjunction - 'and'
• *miṣwōṯay*: noun, feminine plural construct with 1st singular suffix - 'my commandments'
• *ʾăšer*: relative particle - 'which/that'
• *nāṯattî*: qal perfect, 1st singular - 'I have given'
• *lipənêḵem*: preposition with noun, masculine plural construct and 2nd masculine plural suffix - 'before you'
• *hălaḵtem*: qal perfect, 2nd masculine plural - 'you go'
• *ʿăḇaḏtem*: qal perfect, 2nd masculine plural - 'you serve'
• *ʾĕlōhîm*: noun, masculine plural - 'gods'
• *ʾăḥērîm*: adjective, masculine plural - 'other'
• *wə-*: conjunction - 'and'
• *hištaḥăwîṯem*: hishtafel perfect, 2nd masculine plural - 'you worship'
• *lāhem*: preposition with 3rd masculine plural suffix - 'to them'

Word Meanings

• *təšûḇûn*: you turn back, you return, you turn away
• *ʿăzaḇtem*: you forsake, you abandon, you leave
• *ḥuqqôṯay*: my statutes, my decrees, my ordinances
• *miṣwōṯay*: my commandments, my precepts, my orders
• *nāṯattî*: I have given, I placed, I set
• *lipənêḵem*: before you, in front of you, in your presence
• *hălaḵtem*: you go, you walk, you follow
• *ʿăḇaḏtem*: you serve, you worship, you work for
• *ʾĕlōhîm*: gods, deities, divine beings
• *ʾăḥērîm*: other, foreign, strange
• *hištaḥăwîṯem*: you worship, you bow down, you prostrate yourselves

Referenced Verses

• Deut 28:15 : 15 Curses as Reversal of Blessings“But if you ignore the LORD your God and are not careful to keep all his commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force:
• Lev 26:14 : 14 The Consequences of Disobedience“‘If, however, you do not obey me and keep all these commandments–
• Lev 26:33-46 : 33 I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword after you, so your land will become desolate and your cities will become a waste. 34 “‘Then the land will make up for its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its Sabbaths. 35 All the days of the desolation it will have the rest it did not have on your Sabbaths when you lived on it. 36 “‘As for the ones who remain among you, I will bring despair into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a blowing leaf will pursue them, and they will flee as one who flees the sword and fall down even though there is no pursuer. 37 They will stumble over each other as those who flee before a sword, though there is no pursuer, and there will be no one to take a stand for you before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will consume you. 39 Restoration through Confession and Repentance“‘As for the ones who remain among you, they will rot away because of their iniquity in the lands of your enemies, and they will also rot away because of their ancestors’ iniquities which are with them. 40 However, when they confess their iniquity and their ancestors’ iniquity which they committed by trespassing against me, by which they also walked in hostility against me 41 (and I myself will walk in hostility against them and bring them into the land of their enemies), and then their uncircumcised hearts become humbled and they make up for their iniquity, 42 I will remember my covenant with Jacob and also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 The land will be abandoned by them in order that it may make up for its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them, and they will make up for their iniquity because they have rejected my regulations and have abhorred my statutes. 44 In spite of this, however, when they are in the land of their enemies I will not reject them and abhor them to make a complete end of them, to break my covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God. 45 I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the LORD. 46 Summary Colophon These are the statutes, regulations, and instructions which the LORD established between himself and the Israelites at Mount Sinai through Moses.
• Deut 4:23-27 : 23 Be on guard so that you do not forget the covenant of the LORD your God that he has made with you, and that you do not make an image of any kind, just as he has forbidden you. 24 For the LORD your God is a consuming fire; he is a jealous God. 25 Threat and Blessing following Covenant Disobedience After you have produced children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, if you become corrupt and make an image of any kind and do other evil things before the LORD your God that enrage him, 26 I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will surely and swiftly be removed from the very land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not last long there because you will surely be annihilated. 27 Then the LORD will scatter you among the peoples and there will be very few of you among the nations where the LORD will drive you.
• Deut 28:36-68 : 36 The LORD will force you and your king whom you will appoint over you to go away to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known, and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there. 37 You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the LORD will drive you. 38 The Curse of Reversed Status“You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe. 41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 42 Whirring locusts will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil. 43 The resident foreigners who reside among you will become higher and higher over you and you will become lower and lower. 44 They will lend to you but you will not lend to them; they will become the head and you will become the tail! 45 All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the LORD your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given you. 46 These curses will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants. 47 The Curse of Military Siege“Because you have not served the LORD your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty you will serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you. They will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. 49 The LORD will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. 51 They will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, or lambs of your flocks until they have destroyed you. 52 They will besiege all of your villages until all of your high and fortified walls collapse– those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the LORD your God has given you. 53 You will then eat your own offspring, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege by which your enemies will constrict you. 54 The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. 55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating(since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. 56 Likewise, the most tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, 57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth and her newborn children(since she has nothing else), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. 58 The Curse of Covenant Termination“If you refuse to obey all the words of this law, the things written in this scroll, and refuse to fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, 59 then the LORD will increase your punishments and those of your descendants– great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses. 60 He will infect you with all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you. 61 Moreover, the LORD will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments, until you have perished. 62 There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, because you will have disobeyed the LORD your God. 63 This is what will happen: Just as the LORD delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess. 64 The LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone. 65 Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the LORD will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair. 66 Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next. 67 In the morning you will say,‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say,‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see. 68 Then the LORD will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”
• Josh 23:15-16 : 15 But in the same way every faithful promise the LORD your God made to you has been realized, it is just as certain, if you disobey, that the LORD will bring on you every judgment until he destroys you from this good land which the LORD your God gave you. 16 If you violate the covenantal laws of the LORD your God which he commanded you to keep, and follow, worship, and bow down to other gods, the LORD will be very angry with you and you will disappear quickly from the good land which he gave to you.”
• 1 Sam 12:25 : 25 But if you continue to do evil, both you and your king will be swept away.”
• 1 Kgs 9:6-7 : 6 “But if you or your sons ever turn away from me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep, and decide to serve and worship other gods, 7 then I will remove Israel from the land I have given them, I will abandon this temple I have consecrated with my presence, and Israel will be mocked and ridiculed among all the nations.
• 1 Kgs 11:4-8 : 4 When Solomon became old, his wives shifted his allegiance to other gods; he was not wholeheartedly devoted to the LORD his God, as his father David had been. 5 Solomon worshiped the Sidonian goddess Astarte and the detestable Ammonite god Milcom. 6 Solomon did evil in the LORD’s sight; he did not remain loyal to the LORD, like his father David had. 7 Furthermore, on the hill east of Jerusalem Solomon built a high place for the detestable Moabite god Chemosh and for the detestable Ammonite god Milcom. 8 He built high places for all his foreign wives so they could burn incense and make sacrifices to their gods.
• 1 Chr 28:9 : 9 “And you, Solomon my son, obey the God of your father and serve him with a submissive attitude and a willing spirit, for the LORD examines all minds and understands every motive of one’s thoughts. If you seek him, he will let you find him, but if you abandon him, he will reject you permanently.