Deuteronomy 26:9

Summary

The verse recounts that Yehovah brought the speaker's people into "this place" and gave them "this land," described as a land flowing with milk and honey. It forms part of a declarative recital following the Exodus narrative.

Key words

• y.vi.'E.nu ("he brought", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) narrative verb with 1st person plural suffix "us"; the causative stem marks that the subject actively caused the movement, not merely that the group arrived.
• ha.Ma.kom ("the place", H4725) — masculine singular noun with definite article, paired with the demonstrative Zeh ("this", H2088) to specify a particular location already known to speaker and audience.
• i.yi.ten- ("he gave", H5414G) — qal narrative verb, continuing the chain of past sequential actions begun by the previous verb.
• za.Vat ("flowing of", H2100G) — qal active participle, feminine singular, in construct form; it functions like an adjective describing 'E.retz ("land", H0776G) as continuously "flowing" rather than stating a completed action.
• cha.Lav ("milk", H2461) and de.Vash ("honey", H1706) — two masculine singular nouns joined by u. ("and", H9002), forming the fixed pair that specifies what the land flows with.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel narrative clauses, each opened by the narrative vav construction (va- + verb), which in Biblical Hebrew signals sequential past action: "and he brought... and he gave..." Both verbs lack an explicit subject noun in this segment, relying on context (established earlier in the passage) to identify "he" as the one performing the action. The first clause uses the hiphil stem of y.vi.'E.nu ("he brought", H0935P), a causative form indicating the subject caused the group's entry into "the place" (ha.Ma.kom, H4725), marked as specific by the article and the demonstrative Zeh ("this", H2088).

The second clause shifts to the qal stem verb i.yi.ten- ("he gave", H5414G), followed by the indirect object la.nu ("to us", H9005+H9035) and the direct object marker 'et- (H0853, untranslated) governing ha.'A.retz ("the land", H0776G), again specified by the demonstrative Zot ("this", H2063).

The final phrase restates 'E.retz ("a land", H0776G) without the article, followed by the construct participle za.Vat ("flowing of", H2100G), which grammatically links the land to the two nouns cha.Lav ("milk", H2461) and de.Vash ("honey", H1706), joined by the conjunction u. ("and", H9002). The participle form presents the flowing as an ongoing characteristic of the land rather than a single event.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) omits an explicit equivalent for "us" in the first clause ("et introduxit ad locum istum"), rendering it without a direct object pronoun, while the Hebrew y.vi.'E.nu explicitly includes the suffix "us" (H9035). The LXX (εἰσήγαγεν ἡμᾶς) and modern translations preserve this object pronoun, matching the Hebrew more closely than the Vulgate does at this point.