Deuteronomy 31:19

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to write down a song and teach it to the Israelites, having them recite it so that it may function as a witness within the people of Israel. The command has four sequential actions: write, teach, place, and the resulting purpose is testimony.

Key words

• kitVu ("write down", H3789) — qal imperative plural, a direct command addressed to more than one person (traditionally understood as Moses and Joshua).
• lameDa ("teach", H3925G) — piel imperative singular; the piel stem intensifies the action, "teach it thoroughly," and the singular form shifts address to one person.
• shiRah ("song", H7892B) — feminine singular noun, repeated with the demonstrative ha-Zot ("this", H2063), marking a specific, identified composition referred to twice in the verse.
• tihyeh ("it may become", H1961) — qal jussive, expressing purpose/result ("so that it may become"), governed by lema'an ("so that", H4616).
• 'ed ("a witness", H5707) — masculine singular noun without article, functioning as a predicate describing what the song is to become.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve-'atTah ("and therefore/now", H6258), a transitional adverb marking a shift to a new directive following the preceding narrative. The first imperative, kitVu ("write down", H3789), is plural, addressing multiple recipients, while the object is marked by 'et (H0853) before ha-shiRah ha-zot ("this song", H7892B + H2063) — the definite article and demonstrative together specify a particular song already known from context.

The second clause shifts to singular address with lameDa ("teach", H3925G) plus the pronominal suffix -Hah ("it", H9034), and the object 'et-beNei-Yisra'El ("the people of Israel", H1121G + H3478). A third imperative, siMah ("put", H7760H), again singular, places the song be-fi-Hem ("in their mouth", H6310G + H9028) — a construct phrase using "mouth" idiomatically for recitation or memorization.

The final clause introduces purpose with lema'an ("so that", H4616) followed by the jussive tihyeh-li ("let it become to me", H1961 + H9030), where the preposition li ("to me") marks the beneficiary — Yehovah — for whom the song will serve. The predicate le-'ed ("as a witness", H5707) uses the preposition le- to indicate the role the song will occupy, and the final phrase bi-vNei Yisra'El ("among/against the people of Israel", H1121G + H3478) uses the preposition be- (here rendered "in/among" per the morphology) to locate where the witness function operates.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew alternates between plural imperatives (kitVu, "write down," addressed to multiple people) and singular imperatives (lameDa, siMah, "teach," "put"). The LXX renders the first verb as plural (γράψατε) but does not clearly preserve this person-shift in the same way, and translates be-fi-hem ("in their mouth") with εἰς τὸ στόμα αὐτῶν ("into their mouth"), matching the Hebrew idiom. The Vulgate adds interpretive expansion not present in the Hebrew: "ut memoriter teneant, et ore decantent" ("that they may hold it in memory and sing it with the mouth"), where the Hebrew simply has siMah be-fiHem ("put it in their mouth"). The final Hebrew phrase le-'ed bi-vNei Yisra'El ("as a witness among the people of Israel") is rendered by the LXX as μαρτυροῦσα ἐν υἱοῖς Ἰσραήλ ("testifying among the sons of Israel") and by some English versions (BSB) as "a witness for Me against them," introducing an adversarial nuance not explicit in the Hebrew preposition be- ("in/among").