Deuteronomy 6:23

Summary

Deuteronomy 6:23 states that Yehovah brought "us" out from "there" (Egypt) with the purpose of bringing "us" in and giving "us" the land that he had sworn to the ancestors. The verse links the exodus event syntactically to the goal of land-possession through a chain of purpose clauses.

Key words

• ve.'oTanu (H0853 + H9035) — the object marker with 1st person plural suffix ("us") placed at the very start of the clause, before the verb, fronting the object for emphasis.
• hoTzi' (H3318) — hiphil perfect, "he brought out"; the causative stem marks Yehovah as the one causing the departure, not the people acting themselves.
• lema'an (H4616) — subordinating particle introducing purpose, "so as/in order that," connecting the exodus to what follows.
• haVi' (H0935) — hiphil infinitive, "to bring [in]"; again causative, paired with lema'an to express the intended result of the bringing-out.
• niShba' (H7650) — niphal perfect, "he swore"; the niphal stem here carries the sense of an oath-taking act, completed and binding, directed toward the ancestors.

What the text says

The clause opens with the direct object ve.'oTanu ("and us") placed before its verb hoTzi' ("he brought out"), an inverted word order that puts weightaon the object rather than the expected verb-first pattern. This fronting draws attention to "us" as the ones acted upon, distinguishing the recipients of the action from any other party mentioned in the surrounding context.

The verse builds a chain of purpose: hoTzi' ("brought out") is followed by lema'an haVi' ("so as to bring [us] in"), and this in turn is followed by a second infinitive, tet (H5414, qal infinitive "to give"), introduced without a separate purpose particle but continuing the same purpose sequence — "to bring us in, to give us the land." Both infinitives (haVi' and tet) depend on the initial finite verb hoTzi', creating a three-step logical progression: bringing out → bringing in → giving. The final relative clause, asher niShba' la'avoteinu ("which he swore to our fathers"), uses the niphal perfect niShba' to describe a prior completed oath, anchoring the land-gift to an earlier commitment made to the ancestors, expressed through the construct plural noun avoteinu ("our fathers/ancestors").

Differences between versions

The Hebrew contains two distinct infinitives — haVi' ("to bring in") and tet ("to give") — forming a two-stage purpose structure (bring in, then give). The LXX renders this with a single infinitive, δοῦναι ("to give"), used twice: once for "to give to us the land" and again in the relative clause "which he swore to give to the fathers," collapsing the Hebrew's "bring in" step and instead repeating "give." The Vulgate uses a participial construction, introductis ("[us] having been led in"), followed by daret ("he might give"), which preserves both the "bringing in" and "giving" ideas but reorganizes them into a participle-plus-subjunctive structure rather than the Hebrew's paired infinitives.