לְבָנֶ֔יךָ (lə·ḇā·ne·ḵā) in Deuteronomy 6:7: Preposition-l | Noun - masculine plural construct | second person masculine singular
לְבָנֶ֔יךָ (lə·ḇā·ne·ḵā) in Deuteronomy 6:7
Source Word
Deuteronomy 6:7 token 2 is לְבָנֶ֔יךָ, H1121, parsed Prep-l | N-mpc | 2ms and aligned with to your children.
How The Form Affects Interpretation
The compact phrase grounds an expansive daily practice in a concrete relationship between teachers and the children entrusted to their care.
How To Communicate It
Use the recipient marking to keep instruction relational, then follow the verse into the varied places and times where patient conversation occurs.
What Not To Say
- Grammatical form should serve context, not override it.
- The l-prefix identifies children as recipients of teaching, not objects of control.
- The masculine plural form must not be used to rank sons above daughters or to narrow the community's responsibility.
- Diligent formation is faithful witness, not a guarantee of outcomes or a warrant for shaming children, parents, caregivers, or nonparents.
What Does The Label Mean?
Hebrew-nominal
Noun
Preposition-l | Noun - masculine plural construct | second person masculine singular
Masculine
Plural
Construct
Prep-l
Second person masculine singular
The prefixed preposition marks the children as recipients of diligent teaching, while the plural construct noun and suffix express your children. The relation belongs inside the verse's ordinary rhythms of sitting, walking, lying down, and rising rather than to a single formal lesson.
The phrase identifies the next generation as recipients of the words that are to remain on the present generation's heart.
What The Form Does In This Verse
The l-prefixed phrase completes the diligent-teaching verb by naming the children who receive the words.
The Shema's movement from words on the heart to conversation across the repeated settings of daily life.
It identifies the addressee's children as recipients of sustained covenant instruction.
It does not authorize manipulation, limit teaching to sons or biological parents, promise a predetermined response, or replace the wider community's responsibility.
How Much The Form Matters Here
High: The phrase directly identifies recipients in one of Scripture's best-known calls to intergenerational formation.
L-prefixed plural construct noun with possessor suffix. marks the addressee's children as recipients of instruction. Attached to you shall teach them diligently. Governed by the command to keep and speak the covenant words. The surrounding clauses define diligence through repeated ordinary-life conversation.
What does to your children contribute beyond naming a family group? The preposition marks who receives the teaching, while the construct and suffix locate that instruction within an entrusted relationship.
Direct: To represents the prefix, children renders the plural noun, and your represents the possessor suffix.
Masculine plural grammar need not exclude daughters from the addressed family and community. The singular possessor reflects the representative you of the discourse. Diligence describes sustained teaching but does not imply coercion or control of outcomes.
Diligence permits domination: Read the teaching within heart-held words and ordinary conversation, not coercive control. children means sons only: Do not turn grammatical masculine into exclusion from covenant instruction. faithful teaching guarantees faith: Distinguish responsibility for truthful nurture from control over another person's response.
How The Interpretation Is Derived
Deuteronomy 6:7 token 2 is לְבָנֶ֔יךָ, H1121, parsed Prep-l | N-mpc | 2ms and aligned with to your children.
בֵּן can name sons, children, or descendants; the plural construct here relates the addressed adult to the children receiving instruction.
The preposition completes the teaching verb, while the following clauses distribute conversation across home, travel, bedtime, and morning.
Words first held on the heart are to be taught diligently and woven into the covenant community's ordinary patterns of life.
Scripture commends truthful formation and patient witness while preserving each person's accountability; nurture is neither coercive control nor a guaranteed mechanism.
Present diligent teaching as faithful, repeated, relational conversation and include daughters, guardians, extended family, and the wider faith community without erasing the verse's household setting.
Do not infer permission to dominate children, make male children primary, blame caregivers for every outcome, or exclude people without biological children from intergenerational ministry.