Hornets: it is not certain what this means. The word appears also in Exo 23.28 (where it is parallel with “my terror” in verse 27) and in Josh 24.12. Good News Translation has “send panic” (similarly Contemporary English Version) with alternative renderings. “Panic” suggests a sudden fear or desire to run away because of being terrified. BÍBLIA para todos Edição Comum has “a great terror”; New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh “a plague”; the New Jewish Version, “a plague,” with a footnote: “meaning of Heb uncertain”; Revised English Bible “will spread panic.” New Revised Standard Version “the pestilence” is hard to understand. Whatever the disaster, the people who had been able to hide and escape being slaughtered by the Israelites will be killed by it.

Translators are urged to follow Good News Translation, giving alternatives in a footnote. It is also possible to restructure the verse as follows:

• They may try to escape from you by hiding, but Yahweh will cause them to be filled with terror [panic] and will kill them all.

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 .