Deuteronomy 31:27

Summary

Moses declares that he knows the rebellious nature and stubbornness of the people, addressed collectively but in singular forms in the first clause. He states that even while he is still alive and present with them, they have shown themselves rebellious against Yehovah — implying an even greater rebellion is to be expected after his death.

Key words

• meryekha ("your rebellion", H4805H) — masculine singular noun in construct form with a 2nd person singular suffix ("Kha"), literally "rebellion of you."
• ha-qasheh ("the stiff/hard", H7186) — adjective modifying arpekha ("your neck", H6203), forming the idiom "stiff-necked," describing stubborn resistance.
• mamrim ("rebellious ones", H4784) — Hiphil (causative) participle, plural, describing an ongoing or characteristic state of active rebelling, not a single past act.
• heyitem ("you have been", H1961) — Qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural, marking a completed state; combined with the participle mamrim, it forms a periphrastic construction ("you have been [being] rebellious").
• acharei moti ("after my death", H0310A + H4194) — construct chain "after the death of me," using mot ("death", H4194) with a 1st-person suffix.

What the text says

The verse opens with ki ("for/that", H3588A) followed by the emphatic pronoun anokhi ("I", H0595) and the verb yada'ti ("I know", H3045) in the Qal perfect — a completed, certain state of knowledge. The object is introduced twice with the untranslated marker 'et (H0853), first for meryekha ("your rebellion") and then for arpekha ha-qasheh ("your stiff neck"), both nouns in construct form carrying a 2nd person singular suffix, even though the audience is plural — a feature of Hebrew where the nation can be addressed as a singular collective.

The second half shifts to plural verb forms. The interjection hen ("here!", H2005) draws attention to the present moment, and be-'odenni chai ("while I am still alive", H5750 + H2416A) sets the temporal frame using a construct form of "still" with a 1st-person suffix. The clause mamrim heyitem combines a Hiphil participle ("being rebellious," H4784) with the Qal perfect of hayah ("to be", H1961) — a construction that expresses a continuing state of rebellion "with Yehovah" ('im-Yehovah), rather than a single event. The final clause, introduced by ve-'af ki ("and indeed if", H0637 + H3588A), leads into the construct phrase acharei moti ("after the death of me"), left grammatically incomplete in the Hebrew — the sentence trails off without a stated verb, functioning as a rhetorical implication rather than a full clause.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the open-ended Hebrew clause as an explicit question, "πῶς οὐχὶ καὶ ἔσχατον τοῦ θανάτου μου;" ("how not also at the end of my death?"), supplying interrogative structure absent in the Hebrew's elliptical construction. The Vulgate similarly turns it into a rhetorical question, "quanto magis cum mortuus fuero?" ("how much more when I shall be dead?"), matching the LXX's interpretive expansion rather than the Hebrew's incomplete syntax. The Hebrew be-'odenni chai 'immakhem ha-yom ("while I am still alive with you today") is rendered by the LXX as "ἔτι γὰρ ἐμοῦ ζῶντος μεθ' ὑμῶν σήμερον," while the Vulgate adds "et ingrediente vobiscum" ("and going in with you"), an element not present in the Hebrew's construct phrase.