Deuteronomy 19:8

Summary

This verse states a conditional situation: if Yehovah your God expands your territorial boundary — as he had sworn to your ancestors — he will then give you the entire land that he had spoken of giving to them. The verse is grammatically a protasis (the "if" clause) whose consequence continues in the following verse.

Key words

• yarchiv ("he will enlarge", H7337) — hiphil (causative) imperfect: Yehovah is the causal agent who causes the border to expand, not merely a description of it growing on its own.
• gevulkha ("your territory", H1366H) — masculine singular construct with 2nd-person suffix; marks the boundary as belonging specifically to "you" (singular addressee).
• nishba' ("he swore", H7650) — niphal perfect: a completed action with passive/reflexive nuance, commonly used in Hebrew for oath-taking, here referring back to an earlier sworn commitment to the ancestors.
• ve-natan ("and he will give", H5414G) — vav-consecutive (sequential) perfect: grammatically continues the future sense of the preceding imperfect yarchiv, so despite the perfect form it points to a future event that follows logically/temporally from the enlarging of the border.
• dibber ("he spoke", H1696I) — piel (intensive) perfect: an intensive verb of speaking, used here for the earlier promise regarding the land given to the ancestors.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the conjunction ve ("and") plus the conditional particle 'im ("if"), establishing a conditional clause. The subject, Yehovah 'eloheikha ("Yehovah your God", H3068G + H0430G), performs the hiphil verb yarchiv ("he will enlarge"), acting causatively upon gevulkha ("your territory"), marked with the direct object particle 'et (H0853, untranslated). The comparison clause ka'asher nishba' la'avoteikha ("just as he swore to your ancestors") anchors this future enlargement to a previously sworn commitment, using the niphal perfect nishba'.

The second half of the verse uses the sequential perfect ve-natan ("and he will give"), which continues the future time-frame set by the initial imperfect verb, describing a further action: giving "all the land" (kol-ha'aretz). This land is qualified by a relative clause, 'asher dibber latet la'avoteikha ("which he spoke to give to your ancestors"), where the piel perfect dibber ("he spoke") governs the infinitive tet ("to give", H5414G), describing the content of what had been spoken.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb dibber ("he spoke", piel) is rendered in the LXX as eipen ("he said"), a more general verb of speech, while the Vulgate uses pollicitus est ("he promised"), which frames the statement specifically as a promise rather than a simple act of speaking. The Hebrew comparative clause ka'asher nishba' ("just as he swore") appears in the LXX as hon tropon ōmosen ("in which manner he swore"), a slightly more elaborated phrasing than the direct Hebrew comparison.