Deuteronomy 26:5

and you are to declare before the LORD your God, “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt few in number and lived there and became a great nation, mighty and numerous.

Berean Standard Bible

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Study note

Setting — The Israelite worshipper speaks before the priest and the altar at the moment of presenting the firstfruits basket. The declaration is directed to the LORD as the worshipper recounts Israel’s origins.

The words — The text uses 'a.ra.Mi (Aramean) and 'o.Ved (wandering) to describe the patriarch’s mobile existence outside the promised land. These terms ground the historical recitation in specific linguistic markers of displacement.

The thread — The descent to Egypt with a small household and subsequent multiplication echoes Genesis 46:27 and Deuteronomy 10:22. The Aramean reference connects to Genesis 31:20, where Jacob flees Laban.

Why it lands — The text commands a public recitation of historical facts before God. The reader is asked to acknowledge that national identity and current blessing originate from divine intervention rather than ancestral merit.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Hebrew words

King James Version

And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous:

Cross-references

Genesis 46:27 And with the two sons who had been born to Joseph in Egypt, the members of Jacob’s family who went to Egypt were seventy in all.
Deuteronomy 10:22 Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.
Genesis 31:20 Moreover, Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him that he was running away.
Genesis 43:1 Now the famine was still severe in the land.
Genesis 31:24 But that night God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream and warned him, “Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.”
Genesis 43:12 Take double the silver with you so that you may return the silver that was put back into the mouths of your sacks. Perhaps it was a mistake.
Genesis 45:7 God sent me before you to preserve you as a remnant on the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
Genesis 45:11 And there I will provide for you, because there will be five more years of famine. Otherwise, you and your household and everything you own will come to destitution.’
Genesis 24:4 but will go to my country and my kindred to take a wife for my son Isaac.”
Genesis 25:20 and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-aram and the sister of Laban the Aramean.