Deuteronomy 3:20

Summary

Moses tells the Israelites that they may not settle permanently until Yehovah gives "rest" to their kinsmen (the other tribes) as he has already done for them, and those kinsmen take possession of the land across the Jordan. Only then will each man return to the inheritance already given to him.

Key words

• yaniach ("he will give rest", H5117) — Hiphil (causative) imperfect: Yehovah is the one who actively causes rest, not merely allows it; the imperfect marks this as pending/future relative to the "until" clause.
• yareshu ("they will take possession of", H3423H) — Qal sequential perfect, continuing the chain begun by the imperfect yaniach; in this narrative construction the perfect-with-vav carries future/consequential force ("and then they will possess").
• noten ("[is] about to give", H5414G) — Qal participle, describing Yehovah's giving of the land across the Jordan as an ongoing or imminent action, not a completed one.
• natati ("I have given", H5414G) — same root as noten, but Qal perfect: a completed action, referring to the possession already assigned on the near side.
• 'ever ("[the] other side of", H5676H) — construct noun, forming the phrase "the other side of the Jordan," locating the land whose giving is still in progress.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain: an "until" clause with an imperfect verb (yaniach) sets the condition, followed by two sequential perfects (yareshu, shavtem) that describe what happens once that condition is met. This grammatical chaining allows Hebrew to narrate a sequence of future events without repeating "then" or "when" — the vav on each perfect carries the sense of temporal succession from the initial imperfect.

A notable internal contrast is the use of the same verbal root, H5414 ("to give"), in two different forms: the participle noten describes the land across the Jordan as being given in an ongoing sense at the time of speaking, while the perfect natati refers to land already fully given (to the speaker's audience, i.e., the two and a half tribes settled east of the Jordan). The grammar draws a line between a completed grant and a grant still being enacted.

Differences between versions

In the first clause, the Hebrew text names only Yehovah (H3068G) without "your God," but the LXX renders it "κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν" ("the Lord your God"), adding a possessive not present in that clause of the Hebrew. In the second clause, the Hebrew has "Yehovah your God" (Yehovah 'Eloheikhem), but the LXX shifts the pronoun to "ἡμῶν" ("our God") rather than "ὑμῶν" ("your God"), creating an internal divergence from both the Hebrew and its own earlier rendering. The Vulgate's "daturus est" ("is about to give") mirrors the participial nuance of noten in the Hebrew.