Deuteronomy 1:46

Summary

The verse states that the people remained at Kadesh ("Kadesh", H6946G) for many days, using a comparative construction that measures this duration against another period of "days" already known to the audience. The sentence closes a narrative unit with a temporal statement rather than a new event.

Key words

• va-teshevu ("and you remained", H3427) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking sequential past action ("and then you stayed").
• Kadesh ("Kadesh", H6946G) — proper noun, the place name where the stay occurred.
• yamim ("days", H3117G) — masculine plural noun, appears twice in the verse to form the comparison.
• rabbim ("many", H7227A) — masculine plural adjective modifying the first yamim, quantifying the stay.
• asher ("which", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause that specifies the comparison ("as the days that...").
• yeshavtem ("you remained", H3427) — same root as the opening verb, now in perfect form, describing completed action referenced in the relative clause.

What the text says

The verse is built on a repetition of the root yashav ("to remain/sit", H3427): first as va-teshevu, a narrative qal form continuing the story line ("and you remained"), and again at the end as yeshavtem, a perfect qal form inside a relative clause ("that you remained"). This repetition creates a self-referential comparison: the days at Kadesh are measured "like the days" (ka-yamim, H9004 + H3117G) of a period already spent there, using the relative particle asher ("which", H0834A) to link the two temporal expressions.

The construction does not specify an exact number of days; it uses the adjective rabbim ("many", H7227A) attached to the first occurrence of yamim ("days", H3117G) to indicate an extended, unspecified duration, then reinforces this through the comparative clause. The grammar therefore emphasizes duration through repetition and comparison rather than through a numeric figure, a nuance that is visible in the Hebrew's double use of yamim and the shared root yashav but is harder to preserve in translations that render the two verbs differently.

Differences between versions

The LXX repeats "ἡμέρας" ("days") twice, similar to the Hebrew's double yamim, and adds "ἐκεῖ" ("there"), specifying location explicitly, which is not a separate word in the Hebrew text (it is implied by Kadesh already having been mentioned). The Vulgate condenses the verse into a shorter statement, "multo tempore" ("for a long time"), without reproducing the comparative "days...like the days" structure found in the Hebrew and the LXX. The BSB similarly compresses the comparison into an intensified phrase ("a long time — a very long time"), losing the relative clause structure built on asher ("which", H0834A) that is present in the Hebrew.