Deuteronomy 34:5

Summary

The verse reports the death of Moses in the land of Moab, identifying him as the servant of Yehovah, and states that his death occurred according to the mouth of Yehovah.

Key words

• va-Yamot ("and he died", H4191) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the next event in the sequence of the story; simple past narrative form, third person masculine singular.
• 'eved- ("servant of", H5650) — masculine singular noun in construct state, linking Moses directly to the following name Yehovah, forming the title "servant of Yehovah."
• 'Eretz ("land of", H0776G) — feminine singular noun in construct state, joined to Mo'av ("Moab") to specify the location of the event.
• pi ("mouth of", H6310I) — masculine singular noun in construct state, forming the idiom 'al-pi ("upon the mouth of"), here referring to Yehovah as the source of the pronouncement.
• Yehovah (H3068G) — the tetragrammaton, appearing twice in the verse: once in the construct phrase "servant of Yehovah," and once in the phrase "mouth of Yehovah."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav attached to Yamot ("he died", H4191), a standard qal narrative form that continues the sequence of events from the preceding text. The subject, Mosheh ("Moses", H4872), is placed after the verb and the locative adverb sham ("there", H8033G), a common word order in Biblical Hebrew narrative. Moses is immediately qualified by the construct phrase 'eved-Yehovah ("servant of Yehovah"), where 'eved (H5650) in construct state binds directly to the divine name, producing a title rather than two separate nouns.

The location is given through another construct chain: be-'Eretz Mo'av ("in the land of Moab"), where 'Eretz (H0776G) in construct state is bound to Mo'av (H4124G). The final phrase, 'al-pi Yehovah ("upon the mouth of Yehovah"), uses the construct noun pi (H6310I, "mouth of") governed by the preposition 'al ("on", H5921A) to form an idiomatic expression indicating that the event took place in accordance with a pronouncement attributed to Yehovah. The construct chain pi Yehovah does not itself contain a verb of speaking; the idiom conveys correspondence to a spoken directive without specifying its content within this verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'eved ("servant", H5650) as oiketēs ("household servant"), and translates 'al-pi Yehovah ("upon the mouth of Yehovah") as dia rhēmatos kyriou ("through the word/utterance of the Lord"), shifting the Hebrew's idiom of "mouth" to "word" (rhēma). The Vulgate renders the same phrase as iubente Domino ("the Lord commanding" or "at the Lord's command"), an ablative absolute construction that expresses causation rather than the Hebrew's bodily idiom "mouth." The Hebrew construct pi Yehovah itself contains no explicit verb of commanding or speaking, unlike the Vulgate's iubente ("commanding").