Deuteronomy 11:25

Summary

The verse states that no one will be able to stand before the Israelites, because Yehovah their God will place dread and fear of them over the whole land they tread, fulfilling what he had already spoken to them.

Key words

• yityatzev ("he will stand", H3320) — hithpael imperfect, reflexive stem conveying "to take a stand" or "position oneself" against someone, negated by lo' ("not", H3808).
• pachdekhem ("your dread", H6343) — masculine singular construct with 2mp suffix, "the dread belonging to you," i.e., dread caused by them.
• mora'akhem ("your fear", H4172A) — construct noun with 2mp suffix, paired with pachdekhem to double the emotional effect on the peoples of the land.
• yiten ("he will put", H5414H) — qal imperfect, future action performed by Yehovah, governing both pachdekhem and mora'akhem as its direct objects.
• tidrekhu ("you will tread", H1869) — qal imperfect 2mp, describing the ongoing action of walking upon the land referenced by the relative clause.

What the text says

The sentence opens with a negated verb, lo' yityatzev ("he will not stand"), followed by its subject 'ish ("anyone", H0376I) and the prepositional phrase bifneikhem ("before your faces"), literally "in the faces of you (pl.)." This construction places emphasis on the impossibility of any opposing presence before the collective addressees.

The second clause fronts the double object — pachdekhem u-mora'akhem ("your dread and your fear") — before the verb yiten ("he will put"), a common Hebrew word-order feature that highlights what is given rather than who gives it. The subject Yehovah 'eloheikhem ("Yehovah your God") follows the verb. The two nouns pachad and mora' both relate to fear but are placed together as a pair, each governed by the same construct-suffix pattern, intensifying the description of the effect on other peoples.

The phrase 'al-penei kol ha'aretz ("over the face of all the land") uses the same noun panim ("face", H6440G) that appeared earlier in bifneikhem, creating a lexical echo between "before your faces" and "over the face of the land." The relative clause 'asher tidrekhu-vah ("which you will tread on it") uses the resumptive pronoun bah ("in it", combining H9003+H9034), a feature of Hebrew relative clauses where the antecedent is restated pronominally after the preposition. The final clause, ka'asher dibber lakhem ("as he spoke to you"), closes the verse by tying the promise to a prior spoken statement, marked by the piel perfect dibber ("he spoke", H1696I), indicating a completed act of speech.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'ish ("anyone", H0376I) as oudeis ("no one"), matching the negation structurally but shifting the negative particle onto the pronoun itself rather than the verb, as in Hebrew. The Vulgate's nullus stabit similarly integrates the negation into the subject. The LXX also renders the relative clause ephʼ hēs ean epibēte epʼ autēs ("upon which you should tread upon it"), duplicating the prepositional phrase "upon it," a fuller expansion than the Hebrew's single resumptive suffix bah.