Deuteronomy 31:3

Summary

The verse states that Yehovah, the God of the addressee, is the one who will cross over ahead of him, and that Yehovah will destroy the nations before him so that he can take possession of their territory. It adds that Joshua will also cross over ahead of the people, fulfilling what Yehovah had spoken.

Key words

• Yahweh ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine name, repeated twice in the verse, framing both the promise and its fulfillment.
• hu' ("he", H1931) — personal pronoun used three times (positions 4, 9, 24) to emphasize the subject: it is he, not another, who acts.
• 'oVer ("[is] about to pass over", H5674A) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing an ongoing or imminent action; used identically for both Yehovah (position 5) and Joshua (position 25).
• yashMid ("he will destroy", H8045) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, marking future/ongoing causative action: Yehovah causes the destruction of the nations.
• rishTam ("you will dispossess them", H3423H) — qal sequential perfect with pronominal suffix "them" (H9038), continuing the narrative sequence after the participle and imperfect verbs.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around two clauses joined by the repeated pronoun hu' ("he", H1931), which functions as an emphatic subject marker: "Yehovah your God, he is the one crossing over before you... he will destroy these nations." This construction places emphasis on the identity of the actor rather than merely narrating the action — the pronoun hu' isolates and highlights the subject before the verb follows.

The participle 'oVer ("about to pass over", H5674A) is used twice, describing Yehovah's action and later Joshua's action (position 25) with the same grammatical form. This parallel construction links the two figures through identical verbal aspect — both are presented in participial form, indicating an action in progress or about to occur, rather than a simple completed act.

The verb yashMid ("he will destroy", H8045) is in the hiphil stem, which is causative: the form indicates that Yehovah brings about the destruction, rather than merely being associated with it. This is followed by the sequential perfect rishTam ("you will dispossess them", H3423H), which continues the narrative chain begun by the participle and imperfect — a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew where a vav-consecutive perfect follows an imperfect to indicate sequence: destruction of the nations leads to dispossession of their land. The final clause repeats 'oVer for Joshua and closes with dibBer ("he spoke", H1696G), a piel perfect denoting a completed act of speech, referring back to a prior statement by Yehovah.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'oVer ("about to pass over", H5674A) as προπορευόμενος ("going before"), a present participle, matching the Hebrew participial aspect. The Vulgate renders the same word as transibit ("will cross over"), a future tense verb, shifting the aspect from participial/progressive to a simple future. Both LXX and Vulgate retain the parallel structure applying the same verb to Yehovah and to Joshua, as does the Hebrew.