Deuteronomy 1:39

Summary

Yehovah declares that the little ones whom the people had said would become plunder, and the children who do not yet distinguish good from evil, will be the ones who actually enter the land. He states he will give it to them, and they will take possession of it.

Key words

• tap.pekhem ("your little ones", H2945 + H9026) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, naming the group in view: the dependents of the generation being addressed.
• 'amartem ("you said", H0559) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural, marking a completed prior speech-act being quoted back to the audience.
• la.vaz yihyeh ("will become plunder", H0957 + H1961) — preposition + noun functioning predicatively with the qal imperfect yihyeh ("he/it will become", H1961), forming the idiom "become for plunder," i.e., be taken as spoil.
• yade'u ("they know", H3045) — qal perfect, 3rd person plural, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), describing an ongoing state of not-yet-knowing rather than a single completed act.
• yirashu ("they will take possession of", H3423H) — qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural, with the object suffix -ha ("her/it", H9034) referring back to the land.

What the text says

The verse is built from two parallel relative clauses, each introduced by 'asher ("who/that", H0834A), both governed by the same subject pronoun hemmah ("they", H1992): first tapkhem 'asher 'amartem la.vaz yihyeh ("your little ones, whom you said would become plunder"), then uvenekhem 'asher lo'-yade'u ha.yom tov vara' ("and your children who do not know today good and evil"). The repetition of the emphatic pronoun hemmah/hem ("they", H1992) at two points in the verse underscores that it is precisely these dependents — not the addressed adults — who will enter (yavo'u, H0935G) and possess (yirashu, H3423H) the land.

The verb 'et.tenennah ("I will give it", H5414G) is first-person qal imperfect with the object suffix -nah ("it", H9034), placing the giving of the land as Yehovah's direct, ongoing action, distinct from the children's own act of possessing it in the following clause with yirashu. The construction tov vara' ("good and evil", H2896B + H7451B) as adjectives paired without a verb describes a state of not distinguishing between two qualities, rather than referring to a single moral choice.

Differences between versions

The LXX collapses the two Hebrew relative clauses (little ones said to become plunder; children who do not know good/evil) into a single description, pan paidion neon ("every young child"), and does not render the clause about being said to become plunder (la.vaz yihyeh) at all. The Vulgate preserves this clause as "captivi ducerentur" ("would be led captive"), closer to the Hebrew idiom of becoming spoil, while the LXX omits it entirely and moves directly to "who does not know good or evil."