Plant vineyards and dress them: the verb dress here means to do all that is needed to make sure that the vines will grow strong and healthy; this includes cutting them back at the right time. Revised English Bible “cultivate” is better English for nonspecialists. For vineyards see the comment at 6.11.

Neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes: curiously enough, this is in reverse order to what actually takes place, and the translator must decide whether this will cause difficulty for the reader. Good News Translation reverses the order with “you will not gather their grapes or drink wine from them” (similarly Contemporary English Version).

The worm: an appropriate word must be found in the language, to speak of crop-eating worms or grubs (“the grub,” New Jerusalem Bible, Revised English Bible). Them in many languages will be expressed as “the grape vines.”

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 .