Deuteronomy 27:2

Summary

The verse opens a new instruction unit: on the day the people cross the Jordan into the land that Yehovah their God is giving them, they are to set up large stones and coat them with lime. It establishes both a temporal condition (the crossing) and a command tied to that moment.

Key words

• ve.ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961) — sequential perfect with narrative vav, opening the clause and marking it as a continuation of prior legal instruction, functioning almost like "and it shall happen that."
• ta'avRu ("you will pass over", H5674A) — qal imperfect, second person plural, describing the collective future act of crossing.
• noTen ("[is] about to give", H5414G) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing Yehovah's giving as an ongoing/imminent action rather than a completed past act.
• haqemoTa ("you will set up", H6965I) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, singular "you," instructing the addressee to cause stones to stand upright.
• sadTa ("you will whitewash", H7874) — qal sequential perfect, singular "you," the final action in the sequence, applying lime to the stones already set up.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of sequential perfects (ve.ha.Yah, ve.ha.qemoTa, ve.sadTa), a common construction in legal/narrative Hebrew where each verb form with the narrative vav continues the logical sequence begun by the first verb. This creates a temporal-conditional frame: "and it will be, on the day that you cross... you will set up... and you will whitewash." The shift from plural verb (ta'avRu, "you all will cross") to singular verbs (haqemoTa, sadTa) is notable — the crossing is addressed to the collective, while the instructions to set up and whitewash the stones address a singular "you," suggesting a grammatical shift in address within the same sentence that the English translations flatten into consistent second-person forms.

The relative clause 'a.Sher-Yehovah 'e.lo.Heikha noTen lakh ("which Yehovah your God is giving to you") uses the participle noTen, indicating the land is at that narrative moment currently being given — an event in progress rather than a distant future promise or completed past event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the causative verb haqemoTa ("you will set up") with the future indicative στήσεις ("you will set/stand"), and sadTa ("you will whitewash") with κονιάσεις ("you will plaster/coat with lime"), both matching the sequential Hebrew structure. The Vulgate uses imperative-like futures (eriges, "you will erect"; lævigabis, "you will smooth/coat") consistent with the Hebrew's instructional force. The Hebrew's participle noTen ("is giving") is rendered by the LXX with present indicative δίδωσίν ("gives") and by the Vulgate with future dabit ("will give"), showing a difference in how the ongoing/imminent nuance of the Hebrew participle is handled — the Vulgate shifts it into a future tense while the LXX keeps a present-tense form.