Deuteronomy 3:26

Summary

Moses recounts that Yehovah became furious with him because of the people, refused to listen to his plea, and told him to stop speaking about the matter — specifically about entering the land.

Key words

• va-yit'aBer ("and he was furious", H5674B) — hithpael narrative form, giving the verb a reflexive/intensive nuance beyond simple anger; the narrative vav ties it directly to the preceding events as the next link in the story.
• lema'anKhem ("on account of you", H4616 + H9036) — the particle with a 2nd person plural suffix identifies the people collectively as the cause of Yehovah's fury toward Moses.
• shaMa' ("he listened", H8085G) — qal perfect, marking a completed, decisive act: the negation lo ("not", H3808) before it makes clear the listening did not occur, not merely was delayed.
• rav-lakh ("enough for you", H7227A + H9005/H9031) — an adjective with a 2nd person masculine singular suffix, functioning as a short exclamatory statement cutting off further discussion.
• al-Tosef ("may you not add/repeat", H3254G) — hiphil jussive, a causative form expressing a prohibition against continuing or "adding" the action of speaking, reinforced by the infinitive daBer ("to speak", H1696G).

What the text says

The verse is built from two parallel narrative clauses introduced by the narrative vav: first va-yit'aBer Yehovah bi ("and Yehovah was furious with me"), then va-Yomer Yehovah elai ("and Yehovah said to me"). Both place Yehovah (H3068G) as the grammatical subject acting directly upon Moses, marked by the preposition bi ("with me", H9003+H9030) in the first clause and elai ("to me", H0413+H9030) in the second. The cause of the anger is attributed to the addressees through lema'anKhem ("on account of you"), a subordinating particle with a plural suffix, shifting responsibility from Moses himself to the group he addresses.

The refusal to listen is expressed with a qal perfect verb shaMa' preceded by the negation lo, presenting the non-response as a finished, settled fact rather than an ongoing state. The divine speech that follows is compact: rav-lakh is a nominal exclamation without a finite verb, literally "abundance/enough for you," functioning as a directive to stop. The prohibition itself uses a hiphil jussive, al-Tosef, literally "do not add," combined with the piel infinitive daBer ("to speak"), producing the sense "do not continue to speak" — the causative form of "adding" governing the infinitive of speaking. The phrase closes with ba-daVar ha-Zeh ("in this matter"), using the definite article and demonstrative to anchor the prohibition to a specific, already-known topic within the narrative.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-yit'aBer ("he was furious") with hypereiden ("he overlooked/disregarded"), a notably different semantic choice from the Hebrew's emphasis on fury; the Vulgate's iratusque est ("and he was angered") aligns more closely with the Hebrew's sense of anger. The Hebrew rav-lakh ("enough for you") is rendered by the LXX as Ikanousthō soi ("let it be sufficient for you") and by the Vulgate as Sufficit tibi ("it is sufficient for you"), both preserving the exclamatory cutoff sense, though structured as full clauses rather than the terse Hebrew nominal phrase.