Deuteronomy 1:6

Summary

The verse opens Moses' retrospective speech by quoting what Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068) 'elohei ("God of", H0430G) nu ("our", H9025) had spoken at Horeb: that the people had remained at the mountain long enough. It functions as a narrative frame introducing a divine command through direct speech.

Key words

• dibber ("he spoke", H1696G) — Piel perfect, third person masculine singular; the intensive stem marks authoritative or formal speech, and the perfect aspect presents it as a completed past event.
• le'mor ("saying", H0559) — Qal infinitive construct, functioning to introduce direct quotation, a standard formula preceding reported speech.
• rav ("[is] enough", H7227A) — masculine singular adjective used predicatively without a copula verb, meaning the sentence states a condition ("enough") directly, typical of Hebrew verbless clauses.
• shevet ("remaining", H3427) — Qal infinitive construct, functioning here as a verbal noun, the subject of the predicate rav; literally "sitting/dwelling" is enough.
• ba-har ha-zeh ("at the mountain, the this") — noun har ("mountain", H2022G) with definite article and demonstrative zeh ("this", H2088), together forming "this mountain," locating the statement at Horeb.

What the text says

The verse is built in two parts: a narrative introduction (verses 1-5 context) followed by a quoted divine statement. The first clause, Yehovah 'elohei-nu dibber 'elei-nu be-Chorev le'mor, uses the sequence subject–verb–object–location–infinitive to set up the quotation formula "Yehovah our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying." The verb dibber (H1696G), in the Piel perfect, denotes a completed, formal act of speaking, distinguishing it from a lighter Qal usage of "to speak."

The quoted words themselves, rav-lakhem shevet ba-har ha-zeh, form a nominal (verbless) clause. The adjective rav (H7227A) functions as the predicate, and the infinitive shevet (H3427, "to sit/dwell") acts as its subject, with lakhem ("for you," H9036) marking the addressee. This construction—adjective + infinitive subject—expresses sufficiency without needing an explicit verb "to be," a common feature of Biblical Hebrew clauses of this type. The demonstrative ha-zeh (H2088) attached to ha-har (H2022G) specifies "this mountain," anchoring the statement geographically to Horeb, named earlier in the verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shevet ("remaining/dwelling", H3427) with the Greek infinitive κατοικεῖν, "to dwell/inhabit," which corresponds closely to the Hebrew's sense of settled dwelling. The Vulgate instead uses mansistis, a finite past-tense verb ("you have remained"), converting the Hebrew's infinitive-based nominal clause into a completed-action clause with an explicit subject "you," a structural shift not present in the Hebrew's verbless construction.