Deuteronomy 9:22

Summary

The verse lists three wilderness locations — Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth-hattaavah — as places where the Israelites provoked Yehovah. It functions as a summary recollection within Moses' speech, citing specific named incidents of anger/rebellion.

Key words

• tav'eRah ("Taberah", H8404) — proper name, place; the toponym itself derives from a root meaning "to burn."
• maSah ("Massah", H4532) — proper name, place; associated with the root meaning "to test."
• kivRot ("Kibroth", H6914) + hata'aVah ("Hattaavah", H6914) — a compound place name meaning "graves of craving/desire."
• makTzifim ("provoking to anger", H7107) — Hiphil participle, masculine plural; the causative stem indicates causing anger/provocation, and the participle form marks an ongoing or characteristic action rather than a single completed event.
• heyiTem ("you were", H1961) — Qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural; paired with the participle above, it forms a periphrastic construction expressing continuous or habitual past action ("you kept being those who provoke").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure places the three location names first, each introduced by the conjunction u- ("and") plus the preposition ve- ("at"/"in"), before the main verbal clause. This front-loading of locations emphasizes the repeated pattern of provocation across multiple sites rather than a single event. The verbal core, makTzifim heyiTem ("provoking-ones you-were"), uses a participle-plus-perfect combination — a common Biblical Hebrew way of expressing durative or repeated action in the past, roughly "you kept on provoking" rather than "you provoked once." The direct object marker 'et (H0853) introduces Yehovah (H3068) as the object of this ongoing provocation, confirming that the target of the anger-causing behavior is Yehovah himself, not a third party affected by it.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text preserves the three sites as untranslated proper names (Taberah, Massah, Kibroth-hattaavah). The LXX (Ἐνπυρισμῷ, Πειρασμῷ, Μνήμασιν τῆς ἐπιθυμίας) and the Vulgate (incendio, tentatione, Sepulchris concupiscentiae) instead render the etymological meanings of these names — "the burning," "the testing," and "the graves/tombs of desire" — rather than transliterating them as place names. Modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) return to treating them as proper nouns, matching the Hebrew form rather than the LXX/Vulgate's semantic rendering.