Deuteronomy 1:21

Summary

Moses instructs the people to look at the land that Yehovah their God has placed before them, commanding them to go up and take possession of it, as Yehovah had promised their ancestors, and telling them not to fear or be dismayed.

Key words

• Re.'eh ("see", H7200) — qal imperative, masculine singular, opening the verse as a direct command to look/perceive.
• na.Tan ("he sets/gives", H5414) — qal perfect, indicating a completed action: the giving of the land is presented as already accomplished from the speaker's viewpoint.
• 'a.Leh ("go up", H5927) and Resh ("take possession of [it]", H3423) — two qal imperatives in sequence, without a conjunction, forming a tight command chain: "go up, take possession."
• ti.Ra' ("you be afraid", H3372) — qal jussive with the negation 'al ("may not", H0408), forming a prohibition softer/more immediate than a flat imperative negation.
• te.Chat ("you be dismayed", H2865) — niphal jussive (passive/reflexive stem) of the same negated construction, paired with ti.Ra' to form a two-part prohibition.

What the text says

The verse opens with the singular imperative Re.'eh ("see"), addressing the audience as a collective "you" in the masculine singular, a grammatical feature that persists throughout the verse (note the singular suffixes -kha on 'e.lo.Hei-kha "your God" and fa.Nei-kha "before you"). The main clause uses na.Tan in the qal perfect, a completed-action form, describing Yehovah's giving of the land as already settled fact, even though the possession is still future from the people's standpoint — the land is placed le-fa.Nei-kha ("before you", H6440), literally "to your face."

Following this, two imperatives appear back-to-back without a connecting conjunction: 'a.Leh ("go up") and Resh ("take possession"). This asyndetic juxtaposition creates a sense of immediacy, as if the second action follows directly and urgently from the first. The clause is anchored by the comparative particle ka.'a.Sher ("just as", combining H9004 and H0834), which ties the command back to what Yehovah had already di.Ber ("spoke", H1696, piel perfect) to the 'a.vo.Tei-kha ("your ancestors", H0001) — framing the current command as fulfillment of an earlier spoken promise.

The final two clauses form a matched pair of prohibitions, both using 'al + jussive: 'al-ti.Ra' ("do not be afraid") and ve-'al-te.Chat ("and do not be dismayed"). The second verb, te.Chat, is in the niphal stem, a passive/reflexive form, distinguishing it morphologically from the active qal of ti.Ra', though both are rendered similarly in translation as states of fear.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew singular imperatives and singular suffixes (Re.'eh, 'e.lo.Hei-kha) with plural forms (ἴδετε, ὑμῖν, "you" plural), addressing the whole community explicitly rather than the collective singular "you" of the Hebrew text. The LXX also renders na.Tan ("he sets/has given") with παραδέδωκεν ("has handed over"), and reads κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν ("the Lord our God") where the Hebrew has 'e.lo.Hei-kha ("your God") — a shift from second-person to first-person plural possession. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew singular address ("tibi," "tuus") but similarly shifts to "Deus noster" ("our God") in the phrase about the ancestors, paralleling the LXX's first-person plural rather than the Hebrew's second-person singular 'a.vo.Tei-kha ("your ancestors").