Deuteronomy 9:2

Summary

Deuteronomy 9:2 describes a people encountered by the Israelites: a great and tall nation, the descendants of the Anakim, whom the addressee already knows by reputation and has heard rumors about, framed around a rhetorical question asking who could stand against the sons of Anak.

Key words

• ga.Dol ("great", H1419A) — masculine singular adjective describing 'am ("people"), indicating size or magnitude of the nation.
• Ram ("lofty", H7311A) — a qal participle functioning adjectivally alongside ga.Dol, joined by the conjunction va- ("and", H9002); participles here describe an ongoing quality (height) rather than a completed act.
• ya.Da'.ta ("you know", H3045) — qal perfect, second person masculine singular, marking a completed state of knowledge held by the addressee.
• sha.Ma'.ta ("you have heard", H8085G) — qal perfect, second person masculine singular, parallel to ya.Da'.ta, forming a pair: knowing and hearing.
• yit.ya.Tzev ("will he stand", H3320) — hithpael imperfect, third person masculine singular; the hithpael stem gives a reflexive/self-positioning sense ("stand oneself up"), and the imperfect aspect marks it as an open or potential action within the rhetorical question introduced by mi ("who?", H4310).

What the text says

The verse opens with a construct-like description: 'am ("a people") is modified by two coordinated predicates, ga.Dol ("great") and Ram ("lofty"), the second expressed through a qal participle rather than a simple adjective, which in Hebrew can carry a sense of an inherent, ongoing characteristic. This people is then identified in apposition as be.Nei 'a.na.Kim ("descendants of the Anakim"), using the construct noun be.Nei ("sons/descendants of").

The relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("whom") attaches two parallel perfect-tense verbs to the pronoun 'a.Tah ("you"), repeated for emphasis before each verb: ya.Da'.ta ("you know") and sha.Ma'.ta ("you have heard"). The repetition of the second-person pronoun before both verbs is a feature not reproduced in the English or Spanish translations shown, which often smooth it into a single clause.

The closing question, introduced by mi ("who?"), uses the hithpael imperfect yit.ya.Tzev ("will he stand"), a reflexive-stem verb suggesting the notion of positioning oneself firmly, followed by li.f.Nei ("before," construct of "face of") and a second occurrence of be.Nei 'a.Nak ("sons of Anak"), this time in the singular form 'a.Nak rather than the plural 'a.na.Kim used earlier in the verse.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) renders the rhetorical question as a statement of impossibility ("quibus nullus potest ex adverso resistere" — "against whom no one can resist"), rather than preserving the interrogative form mi yit.ya.Tzev ("who will stand") found in the Hebrew and reflected in the LXX's τίς ("who") and the RV1909/BSB/SBLIBRE translations, which retain the question format "who can stand/enfrentarse."