Deuteronomy 30:3

Summary

Deuteronomy 30:3 describes a sequence of future actions by Yehovah: he will reverse the captivity of the addressee, show compassion, and gather the people back from among the nations where they had been scattered. The verse uses a chain of consecutive perfect verbs to present these as steps that will follow one another once a preceding condition (not part of this verse) is met.

Key words

• Shav ("he will turn back", H7725H) — qal sequential perfect; the same root שוב appears again later in the verse (Shav, H7725J, "he will return"), creating a doubling of the "turning/returning" idea applied first to the captivity, then to Yehovah's own action of returning to gather.
• shevutekha ("your captivity", H7622) — feminine singular construct noun with pronominal suffix; grammatically the object that Yehovah "turns back," expressing reversal of exile rather than a physical journey of the people themselves.
• ve-richamekha ("and he will have compassion on you", H7355) — piel sequential perfect, an intensive stem marking compassion as a deliberate, forceful divine act, continuing the verbal chain begun by Shav.
• ve-kibbetzkha ("and he will gather you", H6908) — piel sequential perfect; intensive stem denoting active, thorough gathering, parallel in form to richamekha.
• hefitzekha ("he has scattered you", H6327A) — hiphil perfect (completed action, not sequential); causative stem marking Yehovah as the causer of the prior scattering, contrasted with the sequential future verbs describing the reversal.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four sequential perfect verbs — Shav (H7725H), ve-richamekha (H7355), Shav (H7725J), ve-kibbetzkha (H6908) — all governed by the initial narrative vav construction. In Biblical Hebrew, a vav placed before a perfect verb in this kind of chain marks continuation of a future sequence rather than simple past narration; each verb reports what happens next once the initial condition is fulfilled. The subject throughout is Yehovah 'Eloheikha ("Yehovah your God", H3068G + H0430G), named twice — once at the start of the chain and once again near the end, tied to the relative clause describing the scattering.

The repetition of the root שוב (Shav, H7725H/H7725J) is notable: the same verb form first governs "your captivity" (H7622) as its object, then reappears without an object before "gather," creating a rhetorical doubling around the idea of reversal. The hiphil perfect hefitzekha (H6327A) stands outside the sequential chain, marking the scattering as a completed prior event described in a relative clause introduced by 'asher ("where/that", H0834A).

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text speaks of Yehovah "turning back" (Shav) the shevutekha ("your captivity", H7622). The Vulgate renders this closely: "reducet ... captivitatem tuam." The LXX excerpt given instead reads "ἰάσηται κύριος τὰς ἁμαρτίας σου" — "the Lord will heal your sins" — substituting "sins" for "captivity" and using a verb of healing rather than of turning back. The LXX text as given also appears to omit an explicit verb corresponding to ve-richamekha ("and he will have compassion," H7355), moving directly to "καὶ σε" before continuing with "he will gather again."