Deuteronomy 34:6

Summary

Deuteronomy 34:6 states that someone buried Moses in a valley in the land of Moab, facing Beth Peor, and adds that no one knows the location of his burial place "to this day." The verse closes the account of Moses's death with a note about the unknown location of his grave.

Key words

• va-yik.Bor ("and he buried", H6912) — qal verb in narrative form, third person masculine singular; the subject is not named explicitly in this clause, only implied.
• ba-gai ("in the valley", H1516) — common noun with prefixed preposition and article, giving the geographic setting.
• mul ("opposite to", H4136) — construct noun functioning as a preposition of spatial orientation, linking the burial site to Beth Peor.
• lo-yada' ("he does not know" / "he did not know", H3045) — qal perfect, negated; expresses a completed state of not-knowing, subject is ish ("anyone", H0376).
• ke.vu.ra.to ("his burial place", H6900) — feminine construct noun with third-person suffix "his," naming the specific object that remains unknown.

What the text says

The verse is built on two main clauses joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002). The first clause, "va-yikbor oto" ("and he buried him"), uses the narrative vav construction typical of Hebrew storytelling, chaining this action to the preceding verses. The verb yikbor is third-person masculine singular, but the text does not name the subject within this verse — the grammar simply carries forward from the surrounding narrative. The location is specified through a series of construct and prepositional phrases: ba-gai ("in the valley"), be-eretz Mo'av ("in the land of Moab" — with eretz in construct form, H0776, meaning "land of"), and mul Beit Pe'or ("opposite Beth Peor" — mul in construct form indicating spatial relation).

The second clause shifts to a negated qal perfect verb, lo yada' ("he did not know" / "no one knows"), with ish ("anyone", H0376) as its subject. The object is et-kevurato ("his burial place"), a construct noun with the third-person masculine singular suffix "his." The phrase ad ha-yom ha-zeh ("until this day") uses the preposition ad ("until", H5704) with the demonstrative zeh ("this", H2088) attached to the noun "day," marking the statement as valid up to the narrator's own time of writing, rather than the time of the burial itself.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb yikbor is third-person singular ("he buried"), and the Vulgate matches this with sepelivit ("he buried," singular). The Septuagint, however, renders it as ἔθαψαν ("they buried"), a plural form, differing from both the Hebrew and Vulgate in grammatical number for the subject of the burial.