Deuteronomy 2:31

Summary

Yehovah addresses the speaker directly, announcing that he has begun to hand over Sihon and his territory, and issuing a double command to start taking possession of that land. The verse combines a report of past divine initiative with an imperative call to human action.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal narrative form, marking this as the next event in the reported speech chain, introducing Yehovah's direct words.
• re'eh ("see", H7200) — qal imperative, a command directed at the addressee to pay attention before the following statement.
• hachiloti ("I have begun", H2490) — hiphil perfect, causative in stem and completed in aspect: it presents the "beginning" as an action Yehovah himself has already initiated.
• tet ("to deliver up", H5414) — qal infinitive, expressing the ongoing purpose or content of what has been begun ("begun to give/deliver").
• rash / lareshet ("take possession" / "to take possession of", H3423) — the same root appears twice: first as a qal imperative, then as a qal infinitive, reinforcing the command to possess the land.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative vav construction va-yomer ("and he said"), which links this speech directly to the preceding narrative sequence. After the imperative re'eh ("see"), the divine speaker uses hachiloti — a hiphil perfect — to state that "beginning" is something he himself has caused to happen, and the infinitive tet clarifies the content of that beginning: to deliver Sihon and his land "before your face" (le-fanekha, H6440 with suffix H9021).

The second half of the verse repeats the root ח-ל-ל ("begin") in a different construction: hachel is a hiphil imperative directed at the addressee, followed immediately by rash, a qal imperative from the root R-Sh (H3423, "take possession"), and then the infinitive la-reshet from the same root. This stacking of imperative plus infinitive from the same root is a Hebrew intensifying pattern, underscoring the urgency of the command to possess "his land" (artzo, H0776 with suffix), a phrase repeated twice in the verse for both Sihon and his territory.

Differences between versions

The LXX expands "Sihon" with the phrase "king of Heshbon, the Amorite" (Σηὼν βασιλέα Ἑσεβὼν τὸν Ἀμορραῖον), details not present in the Hebrew text, which reads only Sichon ("Sihon", H5511). The Vulgate condenses the Hebrew's double imperative construction (hachel rash la-reshet) into a single imperative clause, "incipe possidere eam" ("begin to possess it"), losing the root repetition visible in the Hebrew.