Deuteronomy 9:24

Summary

The verse describes a continuous state of rebellion against Yehovah (H3068) that has persisted since a specific starting point: the day the speaker (Moses, in context) began knowing the people addressed. The Hebrew combines a participle and a perfect verb to express durative, ongoing action rather than a single past event.

Key words

• mamrim ("rebelling", H4784) — Hiphil participle, masculine plural; describes an ongoing state of causing rebellion/being rebellious, not a single completed act.
• heyitem ("you have been", H1961) — Qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural; combined with the participle mamrim, forms a periphrastic construction indicating sustained duration ("you have been [continually] rebelling").
• da'ti ("my knowing", H3045) — Qal infinitive with 1st person suffix; marks the temporal reference point ("since my knowing") and identifies the speaker as the one who "knew."
• 'etkhem ("you", H0853 + H9036) — direct object marker with 2nd person masculine plural suffix; marks the addressees as the object of the "knowing."
• miyom ("from the day", H9006 + H3117G) — preposition + noun construct, establishing the starting boundary of the durative action described by mamrim heyitem.

What the text says

The core of the sentence is the combination mamrim heyitem — a participle ("rebelling") paired with a perfect finite verb ("you have been"). This periphrastic structure in Biblical Hebrew typically conveys a continuous or repeated state extending through past time into the present moment of speaking, rather than a single discrete event. The rebellion is thus framed as habitual or ongoing.

The temporal clause miyom da'ti 'etkhem ("from the day of my knowing you") uses an infinitive (da'ti) with a 1st person suffix, making the speaker the grammatical subject of "knowing," and the direct object marker 'et- with a 2nd person suffix ('etkhem) marks the audience as the object being known. The construction places the origin of the rebellion at the very beginning of the relationship between the speaker and the addressees, with no exception noted for the intervening time.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew infinitive da'ti ("I knew" / "my knowing") is active and 1st person: the speaker is the one who knew the people. The LXX renders this differently — ἧς ἐγνώσθη ὑμῖν ("which was known/made known to you") — using a passive verb with the addressees as the ones to whom something is made known, shifting the grammatical relationship between subject and object. The Vulgate's nosse vos coepi ("I began to know you") preserves the active, 1st-person-subject sense found in the Hebrew, aligning more closely with the Masoretic construction than the LXX does.