Deuteronomy 1:12

Summary

Moses asks how he alone can bear the weight of the people's burdens, troubles, and disputes. The verse is a rhetorical question expressing the impossibility of a single leader managing the people's needs without assistance.

Key words

• 'ei.Khah ("how?", H0349B) — interrogative particle opening the rhetorical question, setting an incredulous or exasperated tone.
• 'e.Sa' ("will I bear", H5375H) — qal imperfect, first person singular, expressing a future/ongoing action: the speaker's own capacity to carry something.
• va.D ("alone", H0905H) — construct noun with the suffix -i ("my"), literally "in my aloneness," emphasizing solitary responsibility.
• ta.re.cha. ("burden", H2960) — construct noun with suffix -khem ("your"), the first of three nouns describing what must be carried.
• Ri.ve. ("dispute[s]", H7379) — construct noun with suffix -khem, the third item in the list, referring to legal or interpersonal conflicts.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with the interrogative 'ei.Khah ("how?"), immediately followed by the verb 'e.Sa' ("I will bear/carry"), a qal imperfect verb in first person. This verb form indicates an action viewed as ongoing or potential rather than completed, fitting the rhetorical nature of the question — Moses is not stating a fact but questioning feasibility. The phrase le-va.D-i ("to my aloneness" / "by myself") uses a construct noun with a pronominal suffix to stress the isolation of the subject performing the action.

The core of the verse is a triad of nouns — ta.re.cha.khem ("your burden"), ma.sa.'a.khem ("your burden/load"), and Ri.ve.khem ("your dispute[s]") — each in construct form with the second-person plural suffix -khem ("your"), and each joined by the conjunction ve. ("and"). This grammatical structure creates a cumulative listing effect: three parallel construct nouns, each denoting a different kind of load or difficulty that the people impose on their leader. The construct chain format ("burden of you," "load of you," "dispute of you") is a common Hebrew way to express possession or association, here rendering the sense of "your troubles" collectively.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the three Hebrew nouns as κόπον ("trouble"), ὑπόστασιν ("substance/burden"), and ἀντιλογίας ("disputes/contradictions"), preserving the threefold structure. The Vulgate condenses this into two elements — "negotia vestra" ("your affairs") and "pondus ac jurgia" ("weight and quarrels") — effectively merging ta.re.cha.khem and ma.sa.'a.khem into a single concept ("negotia," "affairs") before adding "pondus" ("weight") and "jurgia" ("quarrels"), differing from the Hebrew's clear three-part parallel construction.