Deuteronomy 33:4

Summary

The verse states that Moses commanded a torah ("law", H8451) to the speakers (rendered "to us" in the Hebrew), and identifies this torah as a morashah ("possession", H4181) belonging to the qehillat Ya'aqov ("assembly of Jacob", H6952 + H3290). The sentence describes the law's origin (through Moses) and its designated recipients (the assembly of Jacob).

Key words

• torah ("a law", H8451) — feminine singular noun, placed at the very start of the clause before its verb, giving it emphasis as the topic of the sentence.
• tzivvah ("he commanded", H6680) — piel perfect, 3rd person masculine singular; the piel stem here conveys an intensive or authoritative commanding action, and the perfect aspect marks it as a completed act.
• lanu ("to us", H9005 + H9035) — preposition with 1st person plural pronominal suffix, attached directly to the verb, indicating the recipients of the command.
• morashah ("a possession", H4181) — feminine singular noun in the absolute state (not construct), describing what the torah is.
• qehillat ("assembly of", H6952) — feminine singular noun in construct form, linking grammatically to Ya'aqov ("Jacob", H3290) to form "assembly of Jacob."

What the text says

The Hebrew clause opens with the object torah before its verb tzivvah, a word-order pattern that foregrounds "law" as the subject of discussion rather than the subject "Moses," who appears only after the verb and its attached pronoun lanu. This produces a structure literally sequenced as "A law he-commanded-to-us, Moses" — object, verb+indirect object, subject — which differs from the more familiar subject-verb-object order and places rhetorical weight on the torah itself.

The second half of the verse, morashah qehillat Ya'aqov ("a possession, assembly-of Jacob"), has no verb of its own. Morashah stands in the absolute state, followed immediately by qehillat, which is in construct form and therefore syntactically bound to Ya'aqov. The construct chain qehillat Ya'aqov functions as a unit, "assembly of Jacob," while morashah stands beside it in apposition, describing the torah mentioned earlier as a "possession" associated with that assembly. Hebrew allows this juxtaposition without an explicit connecting word such as "for" or "belonging to," which several translations supply for clarity.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew lanu ("to us") is matched by the Vulgate nobis ("to us"), but the LXX reads ἐνετείλατο ὑμῖν ("he commanded to you," 2nd person plural), diverging from the Hebrew's 1st person plural. The Vulgate and most cited translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) render "to us," aligning with the Masoretic Hebrew rather than the LXX's "to you."