Deuteronomy 4:41

Summary

The verse states that Moses set apart three cities located on the other side of the Jordan River, toward the direction where the sun rises (the east). It marks the beginning of a new narrative unit introduced by the temporal adverb "then."

Key words

• 'az ("then", H0227A) — adverb opening the verse, marking a transition to a new action following the preceding material.
• yavDil ("he set apart", H0914) — Hiphil (causative) imperfect verb; the Hiphil stem indicates Moses causes a separation/distinction (the cities are made distinct from others), and the imperfect form here narrates a completed past action in the historical narrative sequence.
• 'ever ("[the] other side of", H5676H) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it is grammatically bound to the following word (the Jordan), forming the phrase "the other side of the Jordan."
• mizreCha ("[the] rising of", H4217H) — masculine singular noun in construct state, bound to shamesh, literally "the rising of the sun," an idiom for the eastward direction.
• shamesh ("[the] sun", H8121) — common gender singular noun, completing the construct chain that expresses geographic orientation.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows a verb-subject-object structure typical of narrative prose: yavDil ("he set apart") precedes its subject Mosheh ("Moses"), followed by the object shalosh 'arim ("three cities"). The Hiphil verb form is significant: it is not simply "Moses separated" in a neutral sense, but conveys that Moses actively caused these cities to be designated or distinguished from others — a causative nuance that plain translation as "set apart" or "separated" only partially conveys.

The location of these cities is expressed through two chained construct phrases: be'ever hayarden ("on the other side of the Jordan") and mizrecha shamesh ("toward the rising of the sun"). The second phrase uses the construct noun mizrecha ("rising of") followed by shamesh ("the sun"), a fixed idiomatic construction functioning adverbially to indicate direction — literally "sunrise-ward." The directional force is reinforced by the final letter he (H9011) attached to mizrecha, marking motion or orientation toward that point.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders be'ever hayarden as πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου ("across/beyond the Jordan"), matching the Hebrew construct sense closely. The Vulgate uses "trans Jordanem" similarly. For the directional phrase, the LXX gives ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν ἡλίου ("from the risings of the sun"), while the Vulgate has "ad orientalem plagam" ("toward the eastern region"), both interpretive renderings of the Hebrew idiom "rising of the sun" into their respective target-language equivalents for "east," without introducing semantic divergence in meaning.