Deuteronomy 5:30

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to go and tell the people to return to their tents. The verse is framed as a command addressed to Moses, containing within it a second command that Moses must relay to the Israelites.

Key words

• lekh ("go", H1980) — qal imperative, masculine singular, addressed to Moses alone.
• 'emor ("say", H0559) — qal imperative, masculine singular, paired with lekh to form a compound instruction: go and say.
• shuvu ("return", H7725) — qal imperative, masculine plural, addressed to the people as a group, embedded as direct speech within Moses' errand.
• lakhem ("for/to yourselves", H9005 + H9036) — preposition with plural pronominal suffix, reinforcing that the returning is done by and for the group itself.
• 'oholeikhem ("your tents", H0168 + H9026) — masculine plural noun in construct form with a possessive suffix, naming the destination of the return.

What the text says

The verse opens with two singular imperatives, lekh ("go") and 'emor ("say"), both directed at Moses alone. This sets up a two-part action: physical movement followed by speech. The content of that speech is then given directly, introduced without a formal quotation marker beyond the shift in grammatical number — the verbs move from singular (commands to Moses) to plural (shuvu, command to the people), signaling that the second half of the verse is what Moses is to relay, not what he does himself.

The plural imperative shuvu is followed by lakhem, a preposition plus pronominal suffix that intensifies the reflexive sense of the action — the people are to return for their own sake or by their own doing, a nuance that plain translation as "return" does not fully capture. The final phrase, le-'oholeikhem, uses the construct noun 'oholim ("tents") with a second-person plural suffix, specifying the destination as the tents belonging to the addressees collectively.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew 'oholeikhem ("your tents") is rendered in the LXX as εἰς τοὺς οἴκους ὑμῶν ("into your houses"), using οἴκους ("houses") rather than a term for tents. Additionally, where the Hebrew has an explicit imperative shuvu ("return"), the LXX text given here has no corresponding verb, instead placing the pronoun ὑμεῖς ("you") before the prepositional phrase. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew structure more closely, with revertimini ("return") corresponding to shuvu and tentoria ("tents") corresponding to 'oholeikhem.