Deuteronomy 32:39

Summary

Deuteronomy 32:39 presents a first-person divine declaration of exclusive uniqueness and total power over life and death. The speaker (Yehovah, per the surrounding context of the Song of Moses) asserts sole existence as a deity and unrestricted control over killing, healing, wounding, and rescue — with no external power able to counteract this.

Key words

• ani ("I", H0589) — repeated three times in the verse (positions 4, 5, 12/18), an emphatic personal pronoun not required by verb conjugation, used purely for stress.
• Hu' ("he", H1931) — a third-person pronoun functioning here as a predicate, following the doubled ani, producing the sequence "I, I [am] he."
• 'Ein ("there not", H0369) — a construct-form negating particle appearing twice (before 'Elohim, H0430G, and before yadi, H3027H), grammatically requiring a following noun to negate.
• 'amit ("I put to death", H4191) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, indicating a causative action ("I cause to die") rather than simple dying.
• machatzti ("I wound", H4272) — qal perfect, marking a completed action, contrasting with the surrounding imperfect verbs that denote ongoing/future action.

What the text says

The verse opens with the imperative re'u ("see", H7200G) plus 'attah ("now", H6258), calling attention before the declaration follows. The core assertion "ani ani Hu'" stacks two instances of the pronoun ani ("I") before the pronoun Hu' ("he"), a construction that in the Hebrew has no verb "to be" — the pronouns alone form the predication "I, I [am] he." This repetition of ani is grammatically unnecessary for meaning and serves an emphatic function.

The negated existence clause ve'ein 'Elohim 'immadi ("and there is no 'Elohim, H0430G, with me") uses the construct-negating particle 'Ein followed by the noun 'Elohim ("god/gods", plural form) and the preposition 'immadi ("with me"). The plural form of 'Elohim is grammatically standard in Hebrew for the singular concept "God," so the plural noun does not indicate multiple deities being denied.

The four following verbs — 'amit (hiphil imperfect, "I put to death"), 'achayeh (piel imperfect with vav, "and I bring to life"), machatzti (qal perfect, "I have wounded"), 'erpa' (qal imperfect, "I heal") — alternate between causative/intensive stems and different verbal aspects. The perfect machatzti stands out as marking a completed action amid the surrounding imperfects, which the base data marks as ongoing or future.

The closing clause repeats the construct negator 'Ein before miyyadi ("from my hand," with the pronominal suffix -i, "my") and the participle matzil ("deliverer," hiphil participle, construct form), meaning literally "there is no deliverer from my hand."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the doubled ani ani Hu' as a single ἐγώ εἰμι ("I am"), reducing the double pronoun emphasis of the Hebrew to one Greek clause with the imperative ἴδετε ἴδετε ("see, see") doubled instead — shifting the repetition from the pronoun to the verb. The Vulgate similarly compresses the Hebrew's doubled ani into "ego sim solus" ("I alone am"), adding the word "solus" ("alone"), which is not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew text given. The Vulgate also reorders the wounding/healing pair as "percutiam, et ego sanabo" placed after "occidam... vivere faciam," differing slightly from the Hebrew sequence of 'amit / 'achayeh / machatzti / 'erpa'.