Deuteronomy 3:27

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to climb to the top of Mount Pisgah and look in all four directions with his own eyes, because he will not cross the Jordan River. The verse is structured as a series of four imperatives followed by a causal clause explaining the restriction.

Key words

• 'a.Leh ("go up", H5927G) — qal imperative, a direct command establishing the physical action opening the verse.
• pis.Gah ("Pisgah", H6449) — proper noun naming the mountain, preceded by the definite article ha (H9009) and the construct noun rosh ("top of", H7218I).
• 'ei.Nei.kha ("your eyes", H5869A + H9021) — dual construct noun with pronominal suffix, appearing twice (vv. 7-8 and 23-24), framing the seeing action.
• ta.'a.Vor ("you will pass over", H5674A) — qal imperfect, expressing the negated future action that explains why Moses must look rather than cross.
• ki- ("that/if", H3588A) — subordinating particle introducing the causal clause that gives the reason for the command to look.

What the text says

The verse opens with three consecutive imperatives — 'a.Leh ("go up", H5927G), Sa' ("lift up", H5375M), and re.'Eh ("see", H7200G) — all second-person masculine singular qal forms addressed to Moses. This chain of commands structures the verse around a single subject performing successive actions: ascending, lifting the eyes, and seeing. The four directional terms — Ya.ma ("west", H3220H), tza.Fo.na ("north", H6828G), tei.Ma.na ("south", H8486), and miz.Ra.cha ("east", H4217H) — each carry the directional he suffix (H9011), a grammatical feature marking motion or orientation "toward" a place, here indicating the direction of gaze rather than physical movement.

The repetition of 'ei.Nei.kha ("your eyes", H5869A + H9021) in both the "lift up" and "see" clauses creates a structural echo: the eyes are lifted first, then used to see with emphasis (be'einekha, "with your own eyes"), reinforced by the preposition be (H9003). The final clause is introduced by ki (H3588A), a particle that can function causally ("because") or conditionally ("if"), followed by the negation lo' (H3808) and the imperfect verb ta.'a.Vor ("you will pass over", H5674A). The direct object marker 'et (H0853) precedes hai.yar.Den ("the Jordan", H3383), marking it as the grammatical object of the crossing that will not occur.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders pis.Gah (H6449), a proper place name in the Hebrew, as Λελαξευμένου ("of the hewn/quarried [rock]"), treating it as a descriptive term rather than transliterating it as a proper noun. The Vulgate instead transliterates it as "Phasgæ," aligning more closely with the Hebrew proper name. The LXX also translates Sa' ("lift up") with ἀναβλέψας ("having looked up"), shifting the imperative into a participial form, whereas the Hebrew maintains a direct imperative parallel to the surrounding commands.