Deuteronomy 1:43

Summary

Moses recounts that after he spoke to the people, they did not listen, rebelled against Yehovah's command, and presumptuously went up into the hill country. The verse uses a chain of narrative verb forms to present these actions as a sequential account of past events.

Key words

• 'adaBer ("I spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative form; the intensive stem marks emphatic or repeated speech, joined by the narrative vav to continue the story sequence.
• shema'Tem ("you listened", H8085G) — qal perfect, not narrative; because it follows the negation lo' ("not", H3808), the verb cannot take the narrative vav-consecutive form and instead appears as a plain perfect.
• tamRu ("you rebelled against", H4784) — hiphil narrative; the causative stem intensifies the verb's force, describing active defiance rather than passive disagreement.
• pi ("mouth of", H6310I) — construct noun forming the phrase "mouth of Yehovah," an idiomatic way of referring to a spoken command or word.
• taZidu ("you acted presumptuously", H2102) — hiphil narrative, continuing the same sequential chain, describing a deliberate, willful action.

What the text says

The verse is built almost entirely from narrative (vav-consecutive) verb forms — 'adaBer, tamRu, taZidu, ta'aLu — which in Biblical Hebrew narrative typically signal a chronological chain of events: "I spoke... and you rebelled... and you acted presumptuously... and you went up." This chain creates a rapid, cumulative sense of escalating disobedience. The one exception is shema'Tem ("you listened," H8085G), which appears as a simple qal perfect rather than a narrative form because it is negated by lo' ("not," H3808); Hebrew negation blocks the narrative vav construction, so the verb reverts to the perfect aspect, marking it as a discrete completed (non-)action rather than a link in the narrative chain.

The phrase 'et-pi Yehovah ("the mouth of Yehovah," H6310I + H3068) uses a construct chain where "mouth" functions idiomatically for a spoken command; the direct object marker 'et (H0853) marks this phrase as the object of tamRu ("you rebelled against"). The final verb ta'aLu ("you went up," H5927G) takes the noun ha-Harah ("the hill country," H2022H) with a directional he suffix (H9011), indicating motion toward that location, so the phrase functions as "went up toward/into the hill country" without a separate preposition.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew names Yehovah (H3068) explicitly in the phrase "mouth of Yehovah." The Vulgate renders this as "imperio Domini" ("command of the Lord"), preserving the divine reference generically. The provided LXX text reads τὸ ῥῆμα Τυρίου ("the word/matter of Tyrios"), where the Hebrew has the divine name Yehovah; this LXX form diverges from the Hebrew and Vulgate in the specific term used for the divine referent. The Vulgate also adds "tumentes superbia" ("swelling with pride") as an interpretive expansion of taZidu ("you acted presumptuously," H2102), which the Hebrew expresses with a single causative verb.