Deuteronomy 3:15

Summary

This short verse states that the speaker (Moses, within his address to Israel) gave the region of Gil'ad ("Gilead", H1568G) to Makhir ("Makir", H4353G). It is a formal statement of land allocation, phrased as a completed act attributed to a first-person speaker.

Key words

• u.le (H9002 + H9005) — conjunction "and" fused with the preposition "to"; together they front the recipient (Makhir) before the verb, marking him as the topic of the sentence.
• Ma.Khir ("Makir", H4353G) — proper name of a person, functioning as indirect object of the giving.
• na.Ta.ti ("I gave", H5414G) — qal perfect, first-person singular; the perfect aspect marks the action as completed, and the first-person form identifies the speaker as the one who performed the giving.
• 'et (H0853) — direct object marker; grammatically links the verb to its object ha.gil.'Ad but has no independent translation.
• gil.'Ad ("Gilead", H1568G) — proper place name, definite by virtue of the article ha (H9009) attached to it, marking it as a specific, known territory.

What the text says

The Hebrew clause follows a fronted-object structure: the prepositional phrase u.le.Makhir ("and to Makir") stands first, before the verb na.Ta.ti ("I gave"). This word order places grammatical emphasis on the recipient, Makir, rather than on the action of giving itself — a common feature in Hebrew narrative when introducing or contrasting distinct recipients of land in a list (as this verse belongs to a sequence describing territorial allocations in Deuteronomy 3:12–17).

The verb na.Ta.ti is in the qal perfect, first-person singular, meaning the grammatical subject "I" is embedded in the verb form itself, with no separate pronoun needed. This ties the action directly and personally to the speaker of the passage. The direct object marker 'et introduces ha.gil.'Ad, the definite object receiving the action — the article ha specifies that a determinate, identifiable region ("the Gilead") is meant, not an unspecified or generic area.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (Machir quoque dedi Galaad) uses quoque ("likewise/also") instead of a direct equivalent to the Hebrew conjunction u ("and"), which shifts the connective nuance from simple sequence to additive emphasis ("Machir too I gave..."). The Septuagint (καὶ τῷ Μαχεὶρ ἔδωκα τὴν Γαλαάδ) mirrors the Hebrew structure closely, preserving both the conjunction and the fronted indirect object. The Spanish SBLIBRE inserts a redundant indirect object pronoun (le) alongside the preposition a, a feature of Spanish grammar not present in the Hebrew syntax.