Deuteronomy 11:30

Summary

The verse is a rhetorical question locating "they" (the mountains mentioned in the preceding verses) on the western side of the Jordan, in the land of the Canaanites, near Gilgal and the terebinths/oaks of Moreh. The sentence is built almost entirely from construct chains specifying geographic position relative to known places.

Key words

• Hemah ("they", H1992) — independent personal pronoun, masculine plural, referring back to an antecedent (the mountains) not present in this verse itself; it is the grammatical subject of the question.
• 'ever ("side of", H5676H) — masculine singular construct noun, meaning literally "the other side of," beginning the locative construct chain "'ever ha-Yarden" ("side of the Jordan").
• yoshev ("is dwelling", H3427) — Qal participle, masculine singular, functioning as an attributive verb describing the Canaanite as "the one dwelling" in the Arabah; participles in Hebrew often serve this adjectival/relative role without a separate relative pronoun needed.
• 'Aravah ("Arabah", H6160G) — proper geographic name, object of the preposition ba ("in the", H9003+H9009), marking the specific region where the Canaanite dwells.
• 'elonei ("great trees of", H436H) — masculine plural construct noun, part of the final construct chain "'elonei Moreh" ("great trees of Moreh"), anchoring the location to a specific grove.

What the text says

The verse opens with the interrogative ha (H9008) attached to the negation lo' (H3808), producing the standard Hebrew construction for a rhetorical question expecting a positive answer ("Are they not...?"). The subject Hemah ("they", H1992) picks up a referent from earlier in the chapter, so the sentence itself supplies no noun for what "they" are — this is left to context outside the verse.

The bulk of the verse is a chain of construct phrases stacking one location inside another: "side of the Jordan," then "behind the direction of the entrance of the sun" (a idiomatic way of indicating westward direction, using 'acharei H310A "behind" and derekh H1870K "direction of" together with mevo H3996 "entrance of" and shemesh H8121 "sun"), then "in the land of the Canaanite," further specified by the participle yoshev ("dwelling," H3427) describing the Canaanite as one who dwells "in the Arabah." The final two prepositional phrases, mul ha-Gilgal ("opposite the Gilgal," H4136+H1537G) and 'etzel 'elonei Moreh ("beside the great trees of Moreh," H681+H436H+H4176G), narrow the location further. This layering of construct and prepositional phrases is a common feature of Biblical Hebrew topographical description, allowing precise spatial nesting without subordinate clauses.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Hemah ("they," H1992) with the neuter demonstrative "ταῦτα" ("these things"), a grammatical mismatch with the underlying Hebrew personal pronoun, and adds "ἰδοὺ" ("behold"), not present in the Hebrew construction. The Vulgate drops the interrogative form entirely, rendering the clause as a plain relative statement ("qui sunt trans Jordanem...," "who are across the Jordan") rather than as a question. Regarding the closing phrase, the Hebrew names a place, 'elonei Moreh ("great trees of Moreh," H436H+H4176G), which the LXX interprets as "τῆς δρυὸς τῆς ὑψηλῆς" ("the high oak"), treating Moreh as a descriptive term rather than a proper name, while the Vulgate reads it as "vallem tendentem et intrantem procul" ("a valley stretching and reaching far"), omitting the name Moreh altogether and treating the phrase as a geographic description rather than a place name.