Deuteronomy 19:3

Summary

The verse instructs the preparation of a road system and the division of the land's territory into three parts, so that this territorial arrangement enables anyone who has killed a person to flee to a designated place. The action is framed as a preparatory measure tied to the land Yehovah gives as an inheritance.

Key words

• ta.Khin ("you will establish", H3559K) — hiphil causative imperfect; the subject actively causes a road to be set up or fixed, rather than merely walking on it.
• shi.lash.Ta ("you will divide into three", H8027) — piel sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the first verb; the piel stem gives an intensive nuance of dividing into three distinct parts.
• yan.chi.le.kha ("he will give you as an inheritance", H5157) — hiphil causative imperfect, third person; Yehovah is the causative agent making the land pass into possession.
• ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the chain of actions; introduces the resulting purpose clause.
• ro.Tze.ach ("killer", H7523) — qal active participle, masculine singular; describes an ongoing agent-role ("the one who kills") rather than a fixed noun, preceded by kol ("every", H3605) in construct, giving "every killer" or "any one who kills."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a sequence of verbs connected by the narrative vav (H9001): ta.Khin ("you will establish," H3559K) begins the instruction, followed by ve-shi.lash.Ta ("and you will divide into three," H8027), and later ve-ha.Yah ("and it will be," H1961) introducing the purpose. This chain of imperfect-then-sequential-perfect verbs is a common construction in legal/instructional Hebrew, where the first verb sets the tense and the following verbs (marked with vav plus perfect form) continue the same time-frame and logical sequence.

The phrase gvul 'ar.tze.kha ("the territory of your land," H1366H + H0776G) uses a construct chain: gvul ("territory of") governs 'ar.tzeka ("your land"), meaning the division applies to the boundary-territory of the land as a whole, not to individual fields. The relative clause 'a.sher yan.chi.le.kha Yehovah 'e.lo.he.kha ("which Yehovah your God will give you as an inheritance") modifies "your land," specifying that this is the land being granted, with yan.chi.le.kha (H5157) marking Yehovah as the causative giver of the inheritance.

The final clause, ve.ha.yah la.nus sha.mah kol-ro.tze.ach ("and it will be, to flee there, every killer"), uses the infinitive la.nus ("to flee," H5127) with the directional he on sha.mah ("there," toward that place, H8033G + H9011), expressing purpose: the division of territory exists so that fleeing there becomes possible for the participant described as ro.tze.ach ("killer," H7523), a qal participle indicating one currently engaged in that action rather than a permanent title.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ta.Khin ("you will establish," H3559K) with στόχασαί ("aim carefully/prepare"), a more general verb of preparation, while the Vulgate's sternens diligenter viam ("carefully paving the way") emphasizes physical road-construction, matching the BSB's "build roads." The Hebrew ro.Tze.ach ("killer," H7523), a qal participle, is rendered by the LXX as φονευτῇ ("murderer," a noun) and by the Vulgate as qui propter homicidium profugus est ("who is a fugitive because of homicide"), both nominalizing the Hebrew's participial, action-descriptive form. The SBLIBRE Spanish translation renders ro.tze.ach as "hombre que se mate," which reads as a reflexive ("a man who kills himself") rather than the Hebrew's sense of one who kills another.