Deuteronomy 26:1-4

Presentation of the First Fruits

26:1 When ¹  you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you occupy it and live in it, 26:2 you must take the first of all the ground’s produce you harvest from the land the Lord your God is giving you, place it in a basket, and go to the place where he ²  chooses to locate his name. ³  26:3 You must go to the priest in office at that time and say to him, “I declare today to the Lord your ⁴  God that I have come into the land that the Lord ⁵  promised ⁶  to our ancestors ⁷  to give us.” 26:4 The priest will then take the basket from you ⁸  and set it before the altar of the Lord your God.

[26:1]  ¹ tn Heb “and it will come to pass that.”

[26:2]  ² tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[26:2]  ³ sn The place where he chooses to locate his name. This is a circumlocution for the central sanctuary, first the tabernacle and later the Jerusalem temple. See Deut 12:1-14 and especially the note on the word “you” in v. 14.

[26:3]  ⁴ tc For the MT reading “your God,” certain LXX mss have “my God,” a contextually superior rendition followed by some English versions (e.g., NAB, NASB, TEV). Perhaps the text reflects dittography of the kaf (כ) at the end of the word with the following preposition כִּי (ki).

[26:3]  ⁵ tc The Syriac adds “your God” to complete the usual formula.

[26:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “swore on oath.”

[26:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 7, 15).

[26:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “your hand.”