Deuteronomy 30:5

Summary

The verse announces that Yehovah will bring the addressee back into the land that the ancestors once possessed, that the addressee will take possession of it, and that Yehovah will make him prosper and increase in number beyond the ancestors.

Key words

• he.vi.'a ("he will bring", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: Yehovah is the causal agent who brings the subject into the land; the sequential form links it to a preceding chain of future actions.
• yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068G) — proper name functioning as the subject of the causative verbs in this verse.
• ya.re.Shu ("they took possession of", H3423H) — qal perfect, describing the ancestors' completed act of possessing the land, contrasted with the addressee's own future possession.
• ve.rish.Ta ("you will take possession of", H3423H) — same root as ya.re.Shu but qal sequential perfect, 2nd person: the addressee repeats the ancestors' action, now in continuing sequence with the verbs around it.
• hir.be.kha ("he will make great/multiply you", H7235A) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: Yehovah causes increase, compared explicitly with 'a.vo.tei.kha ("your ancestors", H0001G) via the preposition me ("more than", H9006).

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of sequential perfect verbs (vav + perfect), a common construction in Biblical Hebrew for describing a series of future actions that follow one another: he.vi.'a ("he will bring"), ve.rish.Ta ("you will take possession"), hei.tiv ("he will do good"), hir.be.kha ("he will make you great"). Each verb is joined by the vav described here as narrative/sequential, producing a continuous forward-moving sequence rather than isolated statements. The subject of the causative (hiphil) verbs — bringing, doing good, making great — is Yehovah 'elohei.kha ("Yehovah your God", H3068G + H0430G), while the addressee is the patient/beneficiary marked by pronominal suffixes (-kha, H9031/H9021) attached directly to the verbs.

The land is qualified by a relative clause: 'a.sher yare.shu 'avotei.kha ("which your ancestors took possession of"), using the same root y-r-sh (H3423H) that reappears in ve.rish.tah ("and you will take possession of it") for the addressee. This repetition of the verb root links the addressee's future action to the ancestors' completed past action on the same land. The final clause uses the comparative preposition me ("more than", H9006) to state that the increase caused by Yehovah will exceed that of the 'avotei.kha ("your ancestors", H0001G), the same noun used earlier for those who first possessed the land, now used as the standard of comparison for future growth.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ha'aretz ("the land") with an added adverb ἐκεῖθεν ("from there"), a spatial marker not present in the Hebrew text as given. The Vulgate's assumet ("he will take up/receive") precedes introducet ("he will bring in"), effectively splitting the single Hebrew verb he.vi.'a ("he will bring") into two Latin verbs. The Vulgate also renders hei.tiv ("he will do good to") as benedicens ("blessing"), introducing a term of blessing not explicit in the Hebrew's "do good" phrasing.