Deuteronomy 34:2

Summary

This verse continues the list of territories shown to Moses from the top of the mountain, naming the tribal regions of Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Judah, and extending the view to the "western sea" (the Mediterranean).

Key words

• kol ("all", H3605) — masculine singular construct noun, appearing twice (positions 3 and 13), each time linking to a following proper name to indicate the totality of that territory ("all of Naphtali," "all the land of Judah").
• 'Eretz ("[the] land of", H0776G) — feminine singular construct noun, appearing at positions 7 and 14, marking the following proper name as the possessor of that "land" (construct chain: "land of X").
• 'Et (H0853) — the direct object marker, repeated three times (positions 2, 6, 12), signaling that each following noun phrase is a direct object of the verb governing this list (the seeing/showing described earlier in the passage, not present in this clip).
• Yam ("sea", H3220G) — masculine singular noun with the definite article ha- (H9009), forming "the sea," further specified by the following adjective.
• 'acharon ("western", H0314) — masculine singular adjective, also with the definite article ha- (H9009), modifying Yam; together ha-Yam ha-'acharon means "the sea, the western one," i.e., the sea located to the west.

What the text says

The verse is structured as a chain of direct objects connected by ve- ("and", H9002) and marked repeatedly by the object marker 'Et (H0853). This repetition of the object marker before each new geographic unit is a feature of Biblical Hebrew list-making: it re-marks each item as grammatically dependent on the same governing verb (found earlier in the sentence, outside this clip, referring to Moses' visual survey of the land). The construct chains kol-Naftali ("all of Naphtali") and kol-'Eretz Yehudah ("all the land of Judah") use kol (H3605) to express totality, while 'Eretz Ephrayim u-Menashsheh ("land of Ephraim and Manasseh") places two proper names under a single construct noun 'Eretz (H0776G), meaning the "land" belongs jointly to both territories without repeating the noun.

The final phrase, 'ad ha-Yam ha-'acharon ("to the sea, the westernmost/rearmost"), uses the adjective 'acharon (H0314), which in spatial contexts denotes "hindmost" or "western," relative to an orientation where east is the front. The definite article on both Yam and 'acharon creates agreement typical of Hebrew noun-adjective phrases with a definite head noun.

Differences between versions

The LXXSWETE text as given appears truncated, showing "καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν Ἐφράιμ" — a repeated phrase "πᾶσαν τὴν" without Naphtali's name attached in the second instance, likely a transmission or transcription gap in the provided Greek. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) renders ha-Yam ha-'acharon as "mare novissimum" ("the newest/last sea"), interpreting 'acharon (H0314) as "last" rather than the directional "western" sense reflected in the Spanish (SBLIBRE) "Mar Occidental" and the English (BSB) "Western Sea."