Deuteronomy 1:26

Summary

The verse states that the people were unwilling to go up (into the land) and, following that refusal, rebelled against the spoken command of Yehovah their God. The Hebrew frames this as two linked actions: a lack of will, then an act of defiance expressed through a bodily idiom for speech.

Key words

• 'aviTem ("you were willing", H0014) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural; a completed state of unwillingness, negated by lo ("not", H3808).
• la'aLot ("to go up", H5927G) — qal infinitive with prefixed preposition la ("to", H9005); expresses purpose/goal, "in going up" or "to go up."
• tamRu ("you rebelled", H4784) — hiphil narrative form, 2nd person masculine plural, joined by the narrative vav (H9001); marks a sequential result: "and then you rebelled."
• pi ("mouth of", H6310I) — masculine singular construct noun; forms the idiom "mouth of Yehovah," meaning his spoken word or command.
• 'elohei-khem ("your God", H0430G + H9026) — construct plural noun with 2nd person plural suffix, identifying Yehovah as God specifically of the addressed group.

What the text says

The sentence has two verbal clauses joined by the narrative vav, a grammatical device that presents the second action as following directly from the first in the story sequence. The first clause, velo 'aviTem la'aLot ("and you were not willing to go up"), uses the qal perfect of 'aviTem to describe a completed inner state—unwillingness—paired with the infinitive la'aLot, which supplies the object of that unwillingness: going up. The second clause, vattamRu, shifts to the hiphil stem of the root H4784, which in narrative form carries the sense "you rebelled" or "you were rebellious," and is grammatically presented as the consequence of the refusal already stated.

The phrase 'et-pi Yehovah 'elohei-khem uses pi ("mouth of"), a construct noun, to form an idiom meaning "the word/command of Yehovah your God," where pi stands for spoken instruction rather than a literal mouth. The construct chain 'elohei-khem attaches the 2nd person plural suffix directly to "God," binding the divine name grammatically to the addressed group as "your God."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew idiom pi Yehovah ("mouth of Yehovah") is rendered in the LXX as τῷ ῥήματι κυρίου ("the word/saying of the Lord") and in the Vulgate as sermonem Domini ("the word of the Lord"), both replacing the "mouth" idiom with an abstract noun for speech. The LXX text given also reads θεοῦ ἡμῶν ("our God") rather than reflecting the Hebrew's second-person suffix 'elohei-khem ("your God"), a divergence in pronoun person. The Vulgate's "sed increduli" ("but unbelieving") frames the second clause adjectivally, differing from the Hebrew's sequential narrative verb tamRu ("you rebelled").