Deuteronomy 29:3

Summary

The verse recalls the great trials, signs, and wonders that the audience's own eyes witnessed. It is a nominal, list-like construction without a finite main verb governing the whole clause, relying on the relative clause "which your eyes saw" to anchor the description.

Key words

• ma.sOt ("trials", H4531B) — feminine plural noun with definite article ha. (H9009), marking a specific, known set of trials.
• ra.'U ("they saw", H7200G) — qal perfect, third person, describing a completed act of seeing; the grammatical subject is "eyes," not a person.
• 'ei.Nei.kha ("your eyes", H5869A + H9021) — dual construct noun with second-person masculine suffix; the dual form marks the paired body part as grammatical agent of ra.'U.
• 'o.Tot ("signs", H0226G) — feminine plural noun with definite article, paired with mo.fe.Tim.
• ge.do.Lim ("great", H1419A) — masculine plural adjective, echoing ge.do.Lot earlier in feminine form; agreement in number/gender links each adjective to its respective noun set.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from a chain of definite noun phrases: ha.ma.sOt ha.ge.do.Lot ("the trials, the great ones"), followed by a relative clause 'a.Sher ra.'U 'ei.Nei.kha ("which your eyes saw"), and then a second pair of definite nouns, ha.'o.Tot ve.ha.mo.fe.Tim ha.ge.do.Lim ("the signs and the wonders, the great ones"), closed by the demonstrative ha.Hem ("those," H1992). The adjective ge.do.Lot is feminine plural, agreeing with the feminine plural ma.sOt, while ge.do.Lim is masculine plural, agreeing with the masculine plural mo.fe.Tim — showing that the adjective "great" attaches grammatically to the nearest noun set rather than functioning as one blanket description.

Notably, the verb ra.'U ("they saw") has as its formal subject "eyes" ('ei.Nei.kha), not "you." The dual noun 'ei.Nei.kha acts as the grammatical agent of the seeing, a construction that treats the eyes themselves as the ones who "saw," with the second-person suffix kha indicating whose eyes they are.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate and BSB shift the grammatical subject: "your eyes saw" becomes "you saw with your own eyes" (BSB) or is rendered with "oculi tui" as subject matching the Hebrew (Vulgate, closer to source). The LXX (Swete) preserves the Hebrew structure closely, using "οἱ ὀφθαλμοί σου" ("your eyes") as subject of "ἑωράκασιν" ("they saw"), matching the Hebrew's eyes-as-agent construction. RV1909 and SBLIBRE also keep "tus ojos"/"sus ojos" ("your eyes") as the subject, aligning with the Hebrew rather than the BSB's shift to a personal subject.