Deuteronomy 1:31

Summary

The verse recalls that Yehovah carried Israel through the wilderness "as a man carries his son," using the same root verb in perfect and imperfect forms to draw the comparison. It closes the retrospective survey of the journey by referring back to "this place," the point of arrival before Moses's speech.

Key words

• nesa'akha ("he carried you", H5375H) — qal perfect, 3rd person, with 2nd person suffix; describes Yehovah's completed action toward "you" (singular addressee).
• yisa ("he carries", H5375H) — same root as nesa'akha, but qal imperfect, used generically for the ongoing/habitual action of "a man" carrying his son; the repetition of H5375H in two aspects builds the simile.
• 'elohekha ("your God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun in construct with pronominal suffix, the standard construct form for "God" governing "your."
• halakhtem ("you walked", H1980G) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural, marking the completed journey of the whole group ("you all"), distinct from the singular "you" addressed earlier in the verse.
• ba'akhem ("your coming", H0935G) — qal infinitive with 2nd masculine plural suffix, functioning as "until you (all) came," closing the temporal clause governed by 'ad ("until", H5704).

What the text says

The verse is built around a chain of relative clauses introduced repeatedly by 'asher ("where/that/as", H0834A/H0834D), each attaching further description to midbar ("wilderness", H4057B): the wilderness "where you saw," "where he carried you," and so on. This layering is typical of the passage's retrospective style, piling qualifiers onto a single noun rather than using separate sentences.

The central comparison uses the same verbal root, nasa (H5375H), in two different conjugations: the perfect nesa'akha for what Yehovah did to "you" (singular, addressing the nation as one entity), and the imperfect yisa for the general, ongoing pattern of "a man" ('ish, H0376I) carrying "his son" (beno, construct form H1121A + suffix). The shift from perfect to imperfect marks the shift from a specific completed act to a description of typical or repeated human behavior used as an illustration.

The final clause shifts to plural address: halakhtem ("you walked", 2nd masculine plural) and ba'akhem ("your coming") both use plural suffixes, referring to the whole group's movement "in all the way" (bekhol haderekh) up to "this place" (hamaqom hazeh), marked by the demonstrative zeh ("this", H2088).

Differences between versions

The LXX inserts additional material not present in the Hebrew word list: "ὁδὸν ὄρους τοῦ Ἀμορραίου" ("the way of the mountain of the Amorite"), expanding the description of the wilderness route beyond what the Hebrew text here specifies. The Vulgate renders the clause containing ra'ita ("you saw", H7200G) as a parenthetical aside — "(ipse vidisti)" — rather than integrating it as a relative clause modifying "wilderness" as the Hebrew structure does.