Deuteronomy 11:2

Summary

The verse opens a reminder that the addressed generation itself — not their children — has directly witnessed the musar ("training/discipline", H4148) of Yehovah: his greatness, his strong hand, and his outstretched arm. The sentence sets up a contrast between those who "knew" and "saw" these acts and those who did not.

Key words

• vida'tem ("and you will know", H3045) — sequential perfect form, continuing a narrative chain; functions here to introduce the main clause, often rendered as an imperative-like statement in translation.
• musar ("training/discipline", H4148) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it is grammatically bound to the following name "Yehovah," producing "the discipline of Yehovah."
• gadelo ("his greatness", H1433) — construct noun with 3rd person masculine singular suffix ("his"), one of three parallel objects marked by 'et (H0853) describing what was seen.
• zero'o ("his arm", H2220) — feminine singular construct noun with possessive suffix, paired with the participle netuyah.
• netuyah ("outstretched", H5186) — qal passive participle, feminine singular, agreeing with zero'o ("arm") and describing a completed but ongoing state of extension.

What the text says

The clause begins with vida'tem ("and you will know," H3045), a sequential perfect that in this construction carries the force of the main verb of the sentence — "know this day." The following ki (H3588A) introduces a subordinate clause built on a double negation: lo' et-beneikhem 'asher lo' yade'u ("not your children who did not know"). This piling of negatives — lo' before the object marker and lo' again before the verb yade'u ("they have known," H3045) — creates a dense syntactic structure in which the direct object beneikhem ("your children," H1121A construct + H9026 suffix) is itself qualified by a relative clause containing its own negated verb.

The second half of the verse lists four items joined by repeated 'et (H0853), the untranslated object marker: musar Yehovah 'eloheikhem ("the discipline of Yehovah your God"), gadelo ("his greatness"), yado hachazakah ("his strong hand"), and zero'o hanetuyah ("his outstretched arm"). Each item is a construct-suffix pair, all functioning as objects of the verbs yade'u ("they knew") and ra'u ("they saw," H7200G) from the relative clauses above. The participle netuyah (H5186), from the passive stem, presents the arm's outstretched condition as a static, descriptive state rather than an ongoing action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders musar (H4148) as παιδίαν ("discipline/training"), using a term visually and phonetically close to παιδία ("children"), the word it also uses for beneikhem — producing an internal wordplay not present in the Hebrew construct chain. The Vulgate turns the sequential perfect vida'tem into the imperative "Cognoscite" ("Know!"), and simplifies the Hebrew's double negation (lo'... 'asher lo') into a single relative clause, "quae ignorant filii vestri, qui non viderunt" ("what your children, who did not see, do not know"), consolidating the two negated verbs of the Hebrew into one negated relative clause.