What has passed your lips … what you have promised with your mouth: this repetition, as elsewhere, is for emphasis.

You have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God: there was no obligation. The person who made the promise was not forced to do it. An alternative model may be “the LORD didn’t force you to make a promise.”

For the whole verse, many translators will find the Good News Translation model simpler than Revised Standard Version, which follows the Hebrew structure.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .