Deuteronomy 1:44

Summary

The verse narrates how the Amorites living in the hill country came out to confront the people, pursued them in a manner compared to bees, and scattered them from Seir as far as Hormah.

Key words

• va-yetze' ("and he came out", H3318G) — qal narrative form with the vav that links this action sequentially to the preceding events; subject is singular (the Amorite as a collective).
• ha-Emori ("the Amorite", H0567) — gentilic noun with definite article, referring to the people as a group though grammatically singular.
• ha-yoshev ("who was dwelling", H3427) — qal participle, describing an ongoing state ("the one dwelling") rather than a completed action, modifying "the Amorite."
• ta'aseinah ("they do", H6213A) — qal imperfect, feminine plural, agreeing with ha-devorim ("the bees", H1682); the imperfect here conveys a customary or repeated action ("as bees do/are accustomed to do").
• va-yaketu ("and they scattered/struck", H3807) — hiphil (causative) narrative form; the causative stem indicates that the subject caused the object (the people) to be struck or scattered, rather than simply "striking" in a basic sense.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a chain of narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs: va-yetze' ("and he came out"), va-yirdefu ("and they pursued", H7291), and va-yaketu ("and they scattered", H3807). This chain creates a sequence of actions: the Amorite emerges, pursues, and then strikes/scatters. Note the grammatical shift from singular ("the Amorite... he came out") to plural ("they pursued... they scattered"), consistent with ha-Emori functioning as a collective singular noun that triggers plural verbal agreement in the following clauses.

The comparison clause ka'asher ta'aseinah ha-devorim ("as the bees do") uses a feminine plural imperfect verb agreeing with the feminine plural noun ha-devorim ("the bees", H1682). The imperfect aspect here does not mark a single past event but expresses a general, characteristic action — describing bee behavior as a recurring pattern, which the pursuit is likened to.

The final verb va-yaketu is in the hiphil stem, a causative form of the root H3807. This indicates that the action is not merely "hitting" but "causing to be struck/scattered" — the subject (the Amorites) is presented as the causal agent producing the resulting dispersal of the people, geographically marked from Se'ir (H8165A) to Chormah (H2767).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final verb with ἐτίτρωσκον ("were wounding"), which conveys physical injury, differing from the Hebrew hiphil va-yaketu, which more broadly denotes striking or scattering without specifying wounding. The Vulgate uses cecidit ("he fell" / "it fell"), a singular verb, which diverges from the Hebrew's plural subject-verb agreement in this clause and does not convey the causative nuance present in the Hebrew hiphil form.