Deuteronomy 3:13

Summary

The verse records Moses' report of territorial allotment: the remainder of Gilead and all of Bashan (the former kingdom of Og) were given to half the tribe of Manasseh. It closes with a parenthetical note that this entire region — including Argob — was historically known as "the land of the Rephaim."

Key words

• Ye.ter ("[the] remainder of", H3499A) — masculine singular construct, opening the verse by specifying a portion (not the whole) of Gilead.
• mam.Le.khet ("[the] kingdom of", H4467) — feminine singular construct, placed in apposition to "Bashan" to identify it as the former kingdom of Og.
• na.Ta.ti ("I gave", H5414G) — qal perfect, 1st person singular; marks the verb as a completed act performed by the speaker (Moses), the main verb of the sentence.
• yi.ka.Re' ("it was called", H7121H) — niphal imperfect; the passive/reflexive stem removes the subject who does the naming, leaving only the fact that the land bore this name.
• re.fa.'Im ("[the] Rephaites", H7497B) — masculine plural gentilic, the population/name attached to the land in construct with 'E.retz ("land of", H0776G).

What the text says

The sentence is built on a chain of construct phrases that pile up geographic identifications before the main verb arrives. Ye.ter ha-Gil'ad ("the remainder of Gilead") and kol ha-Bashan ("all of Bashan") are joined by ve ("and", H9002), and then mam.Le.khet Og ("kingdom of Og") stands in apposition, clarifying that this Bashan is specifically the territory that had been Og's kingdom. Only after this stacked description does the verb na.Ta.ti ("I gave") appear, with Moses as the implicit first-person subject, followed by the recipient: la-chatzi shevet ha-Menasheh ("to the half-tribe of Manasseh").

The second half of the verse adds a further specification — kol chevel ha-Argob ("all the region of Argob") — again in apposition to "all Bashan," followed by the demonstrative ha-hu ("that," H1931) referring back to Bashan. The clause then shifts to the niphal verb yi.ka.Re' ("it was called"), a passive construction that states the land's name without naming who called it that. The final construct phrase 'Eretz Repha'im ("land of the Rephaim") supplies that name, using the gentilic plural re.fa.'Im to designate the population associated with the land rather than a specific person.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Og's name as "Γώγ" (Gog) where the Hebrew has og (H5747, "Og"). The LXX also transliterates re.fa.'Im as "Ῥαφαεὶν," while the Vulgate translates the same term interpretively as "gigantum" ("giants") rather than transliterating it, unlike the Hebrew's ethnic/gentilic form.