Deuteronomy 29:16

Summary

Moses reminds the assembly that they themselves know two things from experience: how the Israelites dwelt in the land of Egypt, and how they passed through the midst of the nations along the way. The verse pivots on a deliberate repetition of the same root verb "to pass" (H5674A), first in the first person plural ("we passed") and then in the second person plural ("you passed"), binding speaker and audience together in shared memory.

Key words

• yeda'Tem ("you know", H3045) — qal perfect, 2nd person plural: a completed, settled state of knowledge attributed directly to "you" ('atem, H0859D), emphasized by the preceding independent pronoun.
• yashavnu ("we dwelt", H3427) — qal perfect, 1st person plural: describes the Egyptian sojourn as a finished action experienced collectively by the speaking group.
• avarnu ("we passed", H5674A) — qal perfect, 1st person plural, same root as item below: marks the exodus journey through foreign nations as completed by "we."
• avarTem ("you passed", H5674A) — qal perfect, 2nd person plural, identical root to avarnu: shifts the grammatical subject from "we" to "you," making the audience co-participants in the same journey.
• 'et (H0853) — the untranslated direct object marker, appearing twice, each time introducing a relative clause ('asher, H0834A) that specifies what is "known."

What the text says

The sentence opens with the causal particle ki ("for", H3588A) followed by the emphatic independent pronoun 'atem ("you") before the verb yeda'Tem ("you know"), a construction that foregrounds the addressees as the ones possessing this knowledge, rather than merely stating "you know" as a plain verb form would. The object of their knowledge is introduced twice by 'et 'asher ("that which"), each time governing a perfect-tense verb: first yashavnu ("we dwelt") describing the Egyptian residence, then avarnu ("we passed") describing the journey through the nations. The final clause repeats the same root avar but switches to avarTem ("you passed"), addressed to the audience. This root repetition — avarnu...avarTem — is grammatically visible in Hebrew but can blur in translation, since both are rendered as "passed" in English without the person-shift being marked as clearly.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequence with a single participial/verbal chain — katōikēsamen ("we dwelt"), then en mesō tōn ethnōn ("in the midst of the nations"), followed by hōs parēlthete ("as you passed through") — omitting a distinct Greek verb corresponding to the Hebrew avarnu ("we passed"); only the second-person form appears explicitly. The Vulgate preserves both actions with finite verbs, habitaverimus ("we dwelt") and transierimus ("we passed through"), but concludes the clause with a participle, quas transeuntes ("which, passing through"), rather than a finite second-person verb matching Hebrew avarTem, and the sentence continues syntactically into the following verse.