Deuteronomy 31:2

Summary

Moses tells the Israelites that he is now one hundred twenty years old and no longer able to lead them in military or daily activity ("go out and come in"). He then reports that Yehovah told him directly that he will not cross the Jordan river with the people.

Key words

• ben ("son of", H1121L) — construct noun used idiomatically to express age: "a son of 120 years" means "120 years old."
• 'anokhi ("I", H0595) — the independent personal pronoun, redundant with the verb's built-in subject, adding emphasis to Moses' self-reference.
• 'ukhal ("I am able", H3201) — imperfect form negated by lo' ("not", H3808), expressing Moses' current and ongoing incapacity, not a single past failure.
• latzet...lavo ("to go out...to come in", H3318G/H0935G) — paired infinitives forming a fixed idiom describing the full range of active life, especially leadership and campaign activity.
• ta'avor ("you will pass over", H5674A) — second-person imperfect, the verb form Yehovah uses to address Moses directly about crossing the Jordan.

What the text says

The verse divides into two reported speeches joined by the narrative vav. The first is Moses' own statement to the people, opened by vayomer ("and he said", H0559) in the narrative form. Within it, the age formula ben-me'ah ve-'esrim shanah ("a son of 120 years", H1121L/H3967/H6242/H8141) places the numeral in construct with "son," a common Hebrew way of stating age. The pronoun 'anokhi follows, adding rhetorical weight to Moses' self-description before the phrase hayom ("this day", H3117G) anchors the statement to the present moment.

The second half shifts to a quotation of Yehovah's own words, introduced by va-Yehovah 'amar 'elai ("and Yehovah has said to me", H0559 in perfect aspect), marking completed speech rather than ongoing narration. Yehovah's message uses the second-person imperfect ta'avor ("you will pass over", H5674A), directly negated, to state that Moses himself will not cross the Jordan. The demonstrative hazeh ("this", H2088) attached to "the Jordan" specifies the particular river before them.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Yehovah (H3068G) as κύριος ("lord"), and the Vulgate as Dominus, both replacing the tetragrammaton with a generic divine title. The Hebrew idiom latzet ve-lavo ("to go out and to come in") appears in the LXX in reversed order, εἰσπορεύεσθαι καὶ ἐκπορεύεσθαι ("to come in and to go out"). The Vulgate adds the phrase praesertim cum ("especially since"), an interpretive connector not present in the Hebrew text, which simply juxtaposes the two statements with the conjunction va ("and", H9002).