Deuteronomy 30:4

Summary

Deuteronomy 30:4 states a conditional scenario: if the addressee has been driven to the farthest reach of the heavens, Yehovah his God will gather him from there and bring him back. The verse pairs two verbs of divine action — gathering and taking — both governed by the same subject, Yehovah.

Key words

• nidachakha ("banished one", H5080) — niphal participle construct, meaning it carries passive force: the subject does not banish himself but is banished (a state resulting from an external action), combined with the possessive suffix "your."
• qetzeh ("end of", H7097A) — construct noun, meaning it must connect to the following word hashamayim ("the heavens", H8064) to form the phrase "end of the heavens" — a single boundary point, not two.
• yekabetzkha ("he will gather you", H6908) — piel imperfect, the piel stem intensifies the action of gathering, suggesting a deliberate, thorough regathering rather than a passive occurrence.
• Yehovah (H3068G) with 'eloheykha ("your God", H0430G) — construct phrase naming the subject performing both verbs in the sentence.
• yikachekha ("he will take/bring you", H3947G) — qal imperfect, a simple active verb describing the second action, paired with misham ("from there", H8033G) repeated from the first clause.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the conditional particle 'im ("if", H0518A), introducing a hypothetical situation described by the niphal participle nidacha — grammatically passive, indicating the addressee's dispersal is something that happens to him, located biqtzeh hashamayim, "at the end of the heavens" (singular boundary, using the construct chain qetzeh + hashamayim). The consequence clause repeats the adverb misham ("from there") twice, once before each verb — yekabetzkha (piel, "he will gather you") and yikachekha (qal, "he will take you") — both bearing the second-person masculine singular suffix -kha. The subject Yehovah 'eloheykha is stated explicitly before the first verb and left implied before the second, since Hebrew syntax does not require repeating the subject when it remains unchanged across parallel clauses.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders nidachakha as the noun διασπορά ("the dispersion"), shifting the grammatical subject from "the banished one" to an abstract condition, "your dispersion." The LXX also expands the single phrase biqtzeh hashamayim ("at the end of the heavens") into "ἀπ' ἄκρου τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἕως ἄκρου τοῦ οὐρανοῦ" ("from the end of heaven to the end of heaven"), describing two extremities rather than the Hebrew's one. The LXX further repeats "κύριος ὁ θεός σου" before both verbs, where the Hebrew states the subject only once. The Vulgate's "ad cardines cæli" and passive "fueris dissipatus" align more closely with the Hebrew's single boundary point and passive participle.