Deuteronomy 1:24

Summary

The verse narrates four consecutive actions of the spies: they turned, went up into the hill country, arrived at the wadi of Eshcol, and spied it out. The sentence uses a chain of narrative verb forms typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling, moving the action forward step by step.

Key words

• yifnu ("they turned", H6437G) — qal narrative form; opens the sequence of movement.
• Harah ("the hill country", H2022H) — noun with definite article and a directional he suffix (H9011) attached, meaning "toward the hill country" rather than simply "the hill country."
• Nachal ("wadi of", H5158H) — construct-state noun, meaning it must be linked to what follows (Eshcol) as "wadi of Eshcol," not a free-standing word.
• yeraggelu ("they spied out", H7270) — piel (intensive) narrative form, from the same root as regel ("foot"), giving the sense of "going about on foot to explore" rather than a simple "look."
• otah ("it/her", H0853 + H9034) — object marker with a feminine pronominal suffix; the feminine gender points to an unstated feminine antecedent (consistent with eretz, "land," which is grammatically feminine, though the word "land" itself does not appear in this verse).

What the text says

The verse is built from four verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001), each marking a new event in sequence: turning, going up, arriving, and spying out. This chain structure is a hallmark of Hebrew narrative prose, where the storyline advances verb by verb without needing additional connectors.

The phrase Harah combines the noun "hill country" with the article and a directional he, a grammatical feature that indicates motion "toward" a place — a nuance that plain translations render simply as "into the hill country" without showing the directional marker itself. Similarly, Nachal Eshcol is a construct chain, "wadi of Eshcol," where the first noun depends grammatically on the proper name that follows.

The final verb, yeraggelu, is in the piel stem, which in this root conveys intensified or repeated action — "to spy out" thoroughly, on foot, rather than a single glance. The object marker with feminine suffix, otah, grammatically requires a feminine referent; no explicit feminine noun appears in this verse, so the referent is understood from the wider narrative context.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Nachal ("wadi") as φάραγγος ("ravine, gorge"), a somewhat different topographical image than the Hebrew "wadi" (a seasonal streambed). The Vulgate restructures the final clause: instead of a coordinated verb parallel to the Hebrew's fourth "and they spied it out," it uses "et considerata terra" ("the land having been surveyed"), explicitly supplying "terra" (land) where the Hebrew has only the pronominal suffix otah ("it/her").