Deuteronomy 18:16

Summary

This verse has Yehovah recalling to Moses the request the people made at Horeb: not to hear the divine voice or see the great fire again, out of fear of dying. It functions as the stated reason for the promise, in the surrounding context, that a prophet will be raised up as an intermediary.

Key words

• sha'alta ("you asked", H7592) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine singular: a completed action, addressed to "you" (singular), introducing the comparative clause ke-khol asher ("according to all that").
• osef ("me repeat", H3254G) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, 1st person singular. Combined with the negation lo' ("not", H3808), it forms the idiom "I will not continue/add to do X," here governing the infinitive lishmoa' ("to hear", H8085G).
• qol ("voice of", H6963A) — masculine singular construct noun, linking directly to Yehovah Elohai ("Yehovah my God") in a construct chain; the possessive suffix here is 1st person ("my"), distinct from the kha ("your") suffix earlier in the verse.
• 'er'eh ("let me see", H7200G) — qal imperfect, 1st person singular, paired with lo' and 'od ("again", H5750) to express "I will not see again."
• 'amut ("I will die", H4191) — qal imperfect, 1st person singular, closing the quoted speech with the stated consequence to be avoided.

What the text says

The verse opens with ke-khol asher ("according to all that") plus sha'alta ("you asked", 2ms), which frames the entire sentence as a reference back to an earlier request made "from with Yehovah your God" at Chorev ("Horeb", H2722) on "the day of the assembly" (yom ha-qahal, H3117G + H6951). The verb sha'alta addresses a singular "you," but the content of the request, introduced by the infinitive le'mor ("saying", H0559), shifts into first-person singular speech: lo osef lishmoa' ("I will not continue to hear"), lo'-'er'eh 'od ("I will not see again"), ve-lo' 'amut ("and I will not die"). This grammatical shift — from 2ms narration to 1cs quotation — reproduces the original speaker's own words as a direct citation rather than paraphrasing them in the addressee's voice.

The construct chain qol Yehovah Elohai ("voice of Yehovah my God") repeats the divine name-title pairing seen earlier in the verse (Yehovah Elohekha, "Yehovah your God"), but with the suffix changed from "your" to "my," marking the transition into the quoted first-person material.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew, Vulgate, and the Spanish RV1909/SBLIBRE render the quoted request in the singular ("I will not hear," audiam, "no vuelva yo"), matching the 1cs verb forms osef, 'er'eh, and 'amut. The LXX and BSB instead render this quoted speech in the plural — προσθήσομεν ("we will not add"), ὀψόμεθα ("we will see"), ἀποθάνωμεν ("we might die"); BSB: "Let us not hear... or see... so that we will not die" — shifting the grammatical number of the quotation from singular to plural.