Deuteronomy 33:22

Summary

This verse from Moses's blessing on the tribes concerns Dan. It compares Dan to a young lion that leaps forth from the region of Bashan, using vivid animal imagery to characterize the tribe.

Key words

• Dan ("Dan", H1835G) — proper name, repeated twice in the verse (once as the object of "he said," once as the subject of the description).
• 'amar ("he said", H0559) — qal perfect, marking Moses's completed act of speaking this blessing.
• gur ("cub of", H1482) — masculine singular construct noun; the construct form links it directly to the following noun, producing the phrase "cub of a lion" rather than two separate words.
• 'aryeh ("a lion", H0738B) — absolute noun completing the construct chain begun by gur.
• yezanneq ("he leaps forth", H2187) — piel imperfect; the piel stem gives the verb an intensive or dynamic force, and the imperfect aspect presents the leaping as ongoing, repeated, or vividly future rather than a single past event.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conjunction u ("and", H9002) attached to the preposition le ("of", H9005) plus Dan, forming "and of Dan" — marking this as the introduction to the section of the blessing devoted to Dan, parallel to similar introductions for other tribes in the chapter. The verb 'amar ("he said", H0559) is qal perfect, indicating the speech act is presented as completed: this is what Moses said.

The core of the blessing is a short poetic line: Dan gur 'aryeh — "Dan [is] a cub of a lion." Here gur ("cub of", H1482) stands in construct relationship with 'aryeh ("a lion", H0738B), a very common construct pattern in Hebrew poetry where two nouns are joined without an explicit verb "to be"; the copula is understood from context. This construct phrase functions as a predicate describing Dan's nature or character through animal metaphor.

The final clause, yezanneq min-ha-Bashan ("he leaps forth from the Bashan"), uses the piel imperfect yezanneq ("he leaps forth", H2187). The piel stem intensifies the basic notion of leaping, and the imperfect conveys an action not fixed to a single completed moment — it can be read as habitual, vivid-present, or future. The prepositional phrase min ha-Bashan ("from the Bashan", H4480A + H9009 + H1316) specifies the geographic origin of the leap, with the definite article on Bashan marking it as a known, specific region.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb yezanneq ("he leaps forth", H2187) is rendered by the LXX as ἐκπηδήσεται ("he will leap/rush out"), which preserves the sense of a sudden leaping motion. The Vulgate instead reads "fluet largiter de Basan" ("it will flow abundantly from Basan"), replacing the image of leaping with one of flowing, a notable divergence in the verb's semantic content between the Hebrew/LXX tradition and the Vulgate.