Deuteronomy 31:30

Summary

This verse closes the narrative introduction to the Song of Moses, stating that Moses spoke the words of "this song" aloud to the entire assembly of Israel, continuing until he had finished reciting it in full. It functions as a transition marker between the narrative frame and the poetic text that follows.

Key words

• yedaBer ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel stem, narrative form; the piel intensifies the verbal action, suggesting a formal or deliberate act of speaking rather than casual utterance.
• be'ozNei ("in the ears of", H0241I) — dual construct noun; the dual form of "ears" plus the preposition be ("in", H9003) produces the idiom "in the hearing of," emphasizing that the speech was directly heard by the audience.
• kol-qeHal ("all the assembly of", H3605 + H6951) — two nouns in construct chain; "all" governs "assembly," which itself is in construct with "Israel," building a cumulative phrase describing the totality of the audience.
• divRei ("words of", H1697G) — masculine plural construct; links to hashiRah ("the song", H7892B) to specify exactly what was spoken — the words belonging to the song, not song in the abstract.
• tuMam ("were complete/their completion", H8552 + H9048) — qal infinitive with third-person masculine plural suffix ("their"); combined with 'ad ("until", H5704), it marks the temporal endpoint of the speaking action — continuing until the words reached completion.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around a single main verb, yedaBer ("he spoke", H1696G), introduced by the narrative va ("and", H9001), which continues the sequence of prior narrated events. The subject, moSheh ("Moses", H4872), is followed by a prepositional phrase specifying the audience: be'ozNei kol-qeHal Yisra'El ("in the ears of all the assembly of Israel"), a construct chain that nests "assembly" within "all" and links both to "Israel." This phrase uses the dual noun for "ears" idiomatically to mean "in the hearing of," a construction that Hebrew uses to stress direct auditory reception rather than mere presence.

The object of the speech is marked by the untranslated direct object marker 'et (H0853) followed by divRei hashiRah hazZot ("the words of this song"), another construct chain specifying precisely what was spoken — not the song as a whole entity, but its constituent "words." The final clause, 'ad tumMam ("until they were complete"), uses the qal infinitive tuMam (H8552) with a pronominal suffix referring back to "the words," indicating that the action of speaking extended to the point where all the words had been delivered. The verse thus structures a full performative announcement: speaker, audience, precise content, and duration of the act.