Deuteronomy 8:2

Summary

Moses instructs Israel to remember the entire journey through which Yehovah their God led them for forty years in the wilderness. The purpose clause explains that this journey served to humble them, test them, and reveal what was in their heart — specifically whether they would keep His commandments.

Key words

• za.khar.Ta ("you will remember", H2142) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the vav; expresses a completed-but-ongoing obligation to remember.
• ho.li.kha.kha ("he led you", H1980J) — hiphil perfect, the causative stem showing Yehovah as the active agent who caused the people to walk/travel, not that they walked on their own.
• 'a.no.te.kha ("to humble you", H6031B) — piel infinitive, intensive stem denoting a deliberate, purposeful humbling rather than incidental hardship.
• na.so.te.kha ("to test you", H5254G) — piel infinitive, paired with the previous infinitive via the same le- preposition pattern, marking a second purpose of the wilderness journey.
• tish.Mor ("will you keep", H8104G) — qal imperfect with the interrogative ha (H9008) prefixed, framing the entire clause as a question about future/ongoing action.

What the text says

The verse opens with a vav-consecutive construction: ve-zakharta ("and you will remember", H2142) picks up the narrative sequence from a qal perfect verb, giving it a durative or obligatory sense in context rather than a simple past. The object of remembering is introduced by 'et-kol-ha-derekh ("all the way", H0853/H3605/H1870L), a construct phrase meaning literally "all of the way," followed by the relative 'asher ("which", H0834A) introducing the clause describing that way. The subject of the leading is Yehovah 'Eloheikha ("Yehovah your God", H3068/H0430G), with 'Eloheikha in construct plural form modified by the second-person suffix.

The time phrase zeh 'arba'im shanah ("these forty years", H2088/H0705/H8141) uses the demonstrative zeh to anchor the duration to the present moment of speaking, then ba-midbar ("in the wilderness", H4057B) locates it spatially. The purpose of this leading is expressed through a chain of three infinitives linked by le-ma'an ("so as", H4616) and le- ("to", H9005): 'anotekha ("to humble you", H6031B), nasotekha ("to test you", H5254G), and lada'at ("to know", H3045), each carrying a second-person suffix. This infinitive chain in Hebrew presents the humbling, testing, and knowing as sequential or overlapping purposes of the same divine action, a structure that some translations render as parallel clauses ("so that He might humble... and test... in order to know") while the Hebrew simply stacks three purpose-infinitives without independent verbal conjugation.

The final clause is a direct question embedded within the sentence, marked by the interrogative ha (H9008) prefixed to tishmor ("will you keep", H8104G), followed by 'im-lo' ("or not", H0518A/H3808) — a disjunctive question structure asking whether the commandments would be kept "or not."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the double infinitive sequence differently, using ὡς ἂν ("so that") with subjunctive verbs (κακώσῃ, ἐκπειράσῃ) for "humble" and "test," and adds διαγνωσθῇ ("might be made known") as a passive verb where the Hebrew has an active infinitive lada'at ("to know", H3045) with Yehovah as implied subject. The Vulgate similarly shifts to a passive construction, "nota fierent" ("might become known"), differing from the Hebrew's active infinitive structure centered on the divine subject knowing what is in the heart.