Deuteronomy 9:28

Summary

This verse gives the content of a feared accusation: that the inhabitants of the land might say Yehovah rescued Israel from Egypt only to destroy them in the wilderness, because he was either unable to bring them into the promised land or because he hated them. The verse presents two alternative negative explanations attributed to outside observers.

Key words

• pen ("lest", H6435) — introduces a negative purpose clause, expressing the outcome to be avoided: the statement that follows is what must not be said.
• yo'meru ("they should say", H0559) — qal imperfect, third person plural, marking a hypothetical or feared future speech-act by unspecified subjects (identified in the sentence as "the land," i.e., its inhabitants).
• yekholet ("was able", H3201) — qal infinitive following mibbeli ("because not," H1097), forming the construction "because of the not-being-able," i.e., "because he could not."
• sin'ato ("his hatred", H8135) — feminine noun in construct form with a possessive suffix ("his"), governed by the preposition u-mi ("and from," H9002+H9006), giving "and because of his hatred."
• hotzi'am ("he led them out", H3318H) — hiphil perfect, causative and completed, repeating the same root used earlier for "you brought us out" (hotze'tanu), linking the exodus event to the feared accusation about its purpose.

What the text says

The verse is structured as a purpose clause introduced by pen ("lest," H6435), governing the verb yo'meru ("they should say," H0559). The grammatical subject of this verb is "the land" (ha'aretz, H0776G), functioning by metonymy for its inhabitants — the land itself is not literally speaking, but stands for the people dwelling in it. Two causal explanations are then presented, both introduced by the preposition min ("from/because," H9006): first, mibbeli yekholet Yehovah ("because of Yehovah's not-being-able," H1097 + H3201) to bring them into the land he had spoken of (dibber, H1696I, piel perfect); second, u-missin'ato ("and because of his hatred," H8135) directed at them (otam, the object marker with suffix, H0853+H9038). Both explanations converge on the same result, expressed by the hiphil perfect hotzi'am ("he led them out," H3318H) — the same causative root used for the earlier act of bringing them out of Egypt — followed by the infinitive lahamitam ("to put them to death," H4191) bammidbar ("in the wilderness," H4057B). The repetition of the causative root H3318H for both "brought out" (from Egypt) and "led out" (to die) creates a grammatical parallel between the two acts, framing the feared accusation as an inversion of the exodus narrative's purpose.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders "the land" (ha'aretz) as οἱ κατοικοῦντες τὴν γῆν ("those dwelling in the land"), making explicit the personification implicit in the Hebrew construction where the land itself is grammatical subject of "say." The Vulgate similarly reads habitatores terrae ("inhabitants of the land"). Both versions thus interpret the metonymy rather than preserving the Hebrew's direct attribution of speech to "the land."