Deuteronomy 19:1

Summary

Deuteronomy 19:1 opens a conditional/temporal clause: it describes what happens when Yehovah, referred to as "God" ('Elohei, H0430G) of the addressee, cuts off the nations whose land he is giving, and the addressee takes possession and settles in their cities and houses. The verse sets up the circumstances for legislation that follows in the chapter.

Key words

• ki ("if", H3588A) — subordinating particle opening the clause, giving the verse a conditional or temporal sense ("when/if").
• yakh.Rit ("he will cut off", H3772I) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, indicating a future or ongoing causative action performed by the subject (Yehovah): he causes the nations to be cut off, not merely that they are cut off.
• no.Ten ("[is] about to give", H5414G) — qal participle, masculine singular, expressing an action in progress or imminent ("the one giving"), describing the land-giving as a continuing/ongoing action attributed to Yehovah.
• rish.Ta ("you will dispossess", H3423H) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the imperfect verb; this converted perfect form links the dispossession to the prior action as its consequence.
• ya.shav.Ta ("you will dwell", H3427) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the same chain, marking settlement as the final link in the sequence of events (cutting off → giving → dispossessing → dwelling).

What the text says

The verse is built as a single extended conditional sentence introduced by ki ("if", H3588A), followed by a chain of verb forms that mark sequence rather than independent tenses. The first verb, yakh.Rit ("he will cut off", H3772I), is an imperfect hiphil, presenting Yehovah's action as causative and future/ongoing: he brings about the cutting off of "the nations" (ha-goyim, H1471A). This is followed by a relative clause introduced by 'asher ("which", H0834A) describing the land as one that Yehovah "is giving" (no.Ten, H5414G), a qal participle that in Hebrew often denotes an action presently or continuously in effect, rather than a single completed act.

The two verbs that follow, rish.Ta ("you will dispossess", H3423H) and ya.shav.Ta ("you will dwell", H3427), are grammatically perfects but function as sequential ("waw-consecutive") forms, continuing forward in time from the initial imperfect. This construction is a common feature of Biblical Hebrew narrative and legal syntax: an initial imperfect sets a temporal/conditional frame, and the following converted perfects narrate what happens next in logical sequence — dispossession, then settlement in "their cities" ('arei-hem, H5892B) and "their houses" (batei-hem, H1004B). The double construct chains (cities-of-them, houses-of-them) mark possession without a separate word for "of."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew, LXX, and Vulgate all preserve the same basic sequence of clauses (cutting off, giving land, dispossessing, dwelling), though the Vulgate's disperdiderit ("he will have destroyed") renders yakh.Rit (H3772I) with a verb of destruction rather than a more literal "cut off." The LXX segment provided begins mid-clause with "the land" (τὴν γῆν), corresponding to the object of no.Ten ("about to give", H5414G) and continues with κατακληρονομήσητε ("you inherit/possess by lot") for rish.Ta ("you will dispossess", H3423H), a rendering that frames the taking of land in terms of allotted inheritance, a nuance not explicit in the Hebrew verb itself.