Deuteronomy 10:22

Summary

The verse recalls that the ancestors of the addressee went down to Egypt as a group of seventy persons, and contrasts this with the present, in which Yehovah the God of the addressee has made them as numerous as the stars of the heavens.

Key words

• Ne.fesh ("person[s]", H5315J) — feminine singular noun used here in a collective sense to count individuals ("seventy nefesh"), a common Hebrew idiom for counting people by "souls" or "persons".
• ya.re.Du ("they went down", H3381) — qal perfect, third person plural, describing the completed action of the ancestors' descent into Egypt.
• mitz.Ra.ye.ma(h) ("Egypt" + directional he, H4714G/H9011) — the place name carries the directional suffix he, marking motion "toward" or "into" Egypt, reinforcing the verb "went down."
• sa.me.kha ("he has made you", H7760A + H9031) — qal perfect with second-person suffix, marking a completed action performed by the subject (Yehovah) upon the addressee ("you").
• chokh.Vei ("[the] stars of", H3556) — masculine plural construct, linking to "the heavens" (ha.sha.ma.yim) to form the comparative image "like the stars of the heavens."

What the text says

The sentence divides into two parts joined by ve ("and", H9002), which here functions to contrast a past state with a present one, reinforced by 'a.Tah ("now", H6258). The first clause places the prepositional phrase be.shiv.'Im Ne.fesh ("in seventy persons") before the verb ya.re.Du ("they went down"), fronting the number for emphasis. The subject of that verb, 'a.vo.Tei.kha ("your ancestors", H0001G construct + H9021 suffix), follows the verb — a common word order in Hebrew narrative clauses. The directional he attached to mitz.Ra.ye.ma marks the destination of the movement expressed by ya.re.Du.

The second clause shifts to the qal perfect sa.me.kha ("he has made you"), with Yehovah as the explicit subject followed by its own construct-suffix phrase 'e.lo.Hei.kha ("your God"). The comparison ke.chokh.Vei ha.sha.ma.yim ("like the stars of the heavens") uses the construct chain chokh.Vei ha.sha.ma.yim ("stars of the heavens") to build the image, and the clause ends with la.Ro ("for multitude", H7230), a prepositional phrase indicating the respect in which the comparison holds — the quantity, not any other quality, of the stars.

Differences between versions

The LXX and Vulgate both render sa.me.kha with verbs meaning "made" (LXX: ἐποίησέν, "he has made"; Vulgate: multiplicavit, "he has multiplied"), showing a divergence in how the perfect verb's nuance is conveyed — the Hebrew verb H7760A denotes "to make/set," while the Vulgate's choice specifies increase in number more explicitly than the Hebrew verb alone does. The Vulgate also adds et ecce ("and behold") before "now," an element not present in the Hebrew text's ve.'a.Tah ("and now").