Deuteronomy 33:5

Summary

The verse states that a king arose "in Jeshurun" — a poetic name for Israel — at the moment the tribal leaders and the tribes of Israel assembled together. The Hebrew verb form places this as a completed narrative event, not a future occurrence.

Key words

• yehi ("he was / it came to be", H1961) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), indicating a completed past action: "and there was/became."
• Yshurun ("Jeshurun", H3484) — a proper name used poetically for Israel; the Hebrew text keeps it as a name rather than translating its meaning.
• melekh ("king", H4428G) — a bare singular noun with no article, functioning as the predicate of yehi.
• hit'assef ("gathered themselves", H0622) — hithpael infinitive construct (reflexive stem), describing the leaders' self-gathering as the temporal setting for the main clause.
• shivtei ("tribes of", H7626H) — masculine plural construct, forming a genitive chain with Yisra'el ("Israel", H3478), paralleling rashei 'am ("chiefs of people", H7218H + H5971A).

What the text says

The clause opens with va-yehi ("and it was") followed by the prepositional phrase bi-Yshurun ("in Jeshurun") and the predicate melekh ("king"). Grammatically, the sentence has no explicit subject noun stated for the verb; the 3rd-person masculine singular form of yehi carries the subject internally. The second half of the verse is a temporal clause introduced by be-hit'assef ("when they gathered themselves"), governing two parallel construct phrases: rashei 'am ("chiefs of people") and, joined by yachad ("together", H3162A), shivtei Yisra'el ("tribes of Israel"). These two construct chains function as parallel subjects of the gathering-verb, emphasizing that both the leadership (rashei) and the tribal body (shivtei) assembled as one unit.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Yshurun as τῷ ἀγαπημένῳ ("the beloved one") and melekh as ἄρχον ("ruler"), interpreting the proper name rather than transliterating it, and uses the future tense ἔσται ("will be") instead of a past narrative form. The Vulgate similarly translates Yshurun as "rectissimum" ("the most upright one") and also uses the future "Erit" ("there will be"), diverging from the Hebrew's past-tense yehi. The BSB inserts "the LORD" as the explicit subject of "became King," a specification not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew word list for this verse, where the subject is carried only by the verb's person/gender/number marking.