Deuteronomy 3:12

Summary

Moses recounts that at the time of conquest, "this land" was taken by the Israelites — extending from Aroer on the Arnon valley, plus half of the hill country of Gilead with its cities — and that this territory was assigned by him to the Reubenites and the Gadites.

Key words

• yarashnu ("we took possession of", H3423) — qal perfect, first person plural: a completed action attributed to the collective "we" (Israel), marking the verse's first main clause.
• natati ("I gave", H5414) — qal perfect, first person singular: shifts the grammatical subject from the collective "we" to Moses speaking individually, marking the verse's second main clause.
• na.chal ("wadi of", H5158) — masculine singular construct: links directly to 'Arnon (H0769), forming "wadi of Arnon," describing a geographic boundary.
• chatzi ("half of", H2677) — masculine singular construct: begins a construct chain (chatzi har ha-Gil'ad, "half of the hill country of Gilead") specifying only a portion of that region.
• 'aray ("cities", H5892) with suffix -o ("its", H9023) — construct plural + possessive suffix: "its cities," referring back to the hill country of Gilead just named.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses with two different grammatical subjects. The first clause, ve'et-ha'aretz hazot yarashnu ba'et hahi ("and this land we took possession of at that time"), uses the first-person plural perfect yarashnu (H3423), presenting the conquest as a collective act of the people. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) marks ha'aretz hazot ("this land") as the object of that verb. The second clause switches to natati (H5414), first-person singular perfect, where Moses alone is the grammatical subject who "gave" the territory to the Reubenites and Gadites.

Between these two clauses, the text specifies the geography through a chain of construct phrases: me'Aro'er 'asher 'al-nachal 'Arnon ("from Aroer, which is on the wadi of Arnon") locates the southern boundary, while va-chatzi har-haGil'ad ve'arav ("and half the hill country of Gilead and its cities") identifies a distinct northern portion. The construct forms (nachal, chatzi, har, 'aray) chain nouns together without independent articles, a feature of Hebrew that packs geographic description into a compact sequence not always rendered identically across translations.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yarashnu ("we took possession of") with ἐπρονομεύσαμεν ("we plundered/despoiled"), a stronger term than the Hebrew's simple "took possession." The Vulgate uses possedimus ("we possessed"), closer to the Hebrew sense. Additionally, the LXX and Vulgate structure the sentence with "this land" as the object of "possessed" followed by a separate clause for the giving, while some modern translations (e.g., BSB) restructure the verse into two full sentences, attaching "beyond Aroer... half the hill country" directly to the giving-clause rather than the possession-clause, altering which geographic detail modifies which verb.