Deuteronomy 11:31

Summary

The verse states that the addressees (plural "you") are in the process of crossing the Jordan in order to enter and take possession of the land that Yehovah their God is giving them, and that afterward they will take possession of it and dwell in it.

Key words

• 'oe.Rim ("about to pass over", H5674A) — qal participle, masculine plural, describing an action in progress or imminent, not a simple past/future tense.
• Vo' ("go", H0935G) and Re.shet ("take possession of", H3423H) — both qal infinitives introduced by the preposition la ("to"), forming a purpose chain: crossing → in order to go → in order to take possession.
• no.Ten ("about to give", H5414G) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing Yehovah's action as ongoing/imminent rather than completed.
• rish.Tem ("you will take possession of", H3423H) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative sequence after the participles, marking a subsequent stage of action.
• vi.shav.tem ("you will dwell", H3427) — qal sequential perfect, parallel to rish.Tem, closing the sequence of actions.

What the text says

The sentence is built around two participles — 'oe.Rim ("about to pass over") and no.Ten ("about to give") — both of which express action that is in progress or on the verge of happening, rather than a completed or simple future event. The subject "you" ('a.Tem, H0859D) crosses the Jordan (et-ha-Yarden), and this crossing is linked by two successive infinitives with the preposition la: la-Vo' ("to go") and la-Reshet ("to take possession of"), producing a purpose structure — the crossing happens for the sake of entering, and entering happens for the sake of taking possession of the land.

The land itself is defined by a relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("which"): "the land which Yehovah your God is giving to you" — here no.Ten again uses the participle form, presenting the giving as a continuous or imminent divine action rather than a one-time past event. After this, the grammar shifts: vi.rish.Tem ("and you will take possession of it") and vi.shav.tem ("and you will dwell in it") both use the sequential perfect form linked by the narrative vav (H9001), which continues a chain of consequence — first the crossing/entering (participles), then the possession and dwelling (sequential perfects) as later stages in the same continuous action. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) appears three times (before "Jordan," before "land," and as the suffixed form 'oTah / bah, "it"/"in it"), marking the grammatical objects without adding independent meaning of its own.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the phrase "all the days" (πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας) after "giving to you," an addition not present in the Hebrew text or reflected in the Vulgate's "daturus est vobis." The Vulgate condenses the two Hebrew sequential perfects vi.rish.Tem and vi.shav.tem into a purpose clause "ut habeatis et possideatis illam" ("that you may have and possess it"), differing from the Hebrew's sequential, consequential structure. The BSB splits the verse differently, moving "when you take possession of it and settle in it" into what functions as the opening of the following verse's clause, altering the sentence boundary present in the Hebrew.