Deuteronomy 31

## Summary Deuteronomy 31 narrates the transition of leadership from Moses to Joshua as Moses reaches 120 years and is barred from entering the land. Moses writes down "this law" and commissions the Levites to place it beside the ark, while Yahweh predicts Israel's future unfaithfulness after Moses' death. The chapter closes with Moses composing and reciting a song intended to function as a witness against the people. ## Key words - *chazaq* ("be strong", H2388) — qal imperative, repeated to Israel (v.6), to Joshua (v.7,23), and by Moses to Joshua again (v.23), always paired with *'amats* ("be bold", H0553), forming a fixed exhortation formula tied to the leadership transfer. - *torah* ("law", H8451) — feminine singular noun, always with the demonstrative *ha-zot* ("this", H2063), referring to a specific written document Moses produces (v.9, 24) rather than an abstract concept. - *shirah* ("song", H7892) — feminine singular, also marked with *ha-zot*, distinguished from the *torah* as a separate composition (vv.19, 22, 30) with its own function. - *'ed* ("witness", H5707) — masculine singular noun used twice: the *torah* is placed as an *'ed* (v.26) and the *shirah* is designated an *'ed* (v.19, 21) — the text applies the same legal-witness terminology to both the law-document and the song. - *yarpekha...ya'azvekha* ("he will abandon you...he will forsake you", H7503/H5800) — two imperfect verbs in negated parallel clauses (vv.6, 8), repeated almost verbatim by Moses to the people and then by Yahweh to Moses, framing Joshua's commissioning. ## What the text says The chapter is built on repeated formulaic speech-acts rather than narrative description alone. The imperative pair *chazaq ve-'imtsu* ("be strong and be bold") appears three times with slight person changes (plural to the people in v.6, singular to Joshua in v.7 and v.23), showing the same encouragement formula transferred from the collective audience to the individual successor. The negated imperfect pair *lo yarpekha ve-lo ya'azvekha* is likewise repeated in v.6 and v.8 with identical wording, first as Moses' promise to the people, then restated by the narrator about Yahweh — the doubling reinforces the assurance through verbatim recurrence rather than paraphrase. A grammatical distinction separates two written objects: the *torah ha-zot* (vv.9, 24, 26) is written by Moses and handed to the priests to be placed beside the ark, while the *shirah ha-zot* (vv.19, 22, 30) is a separate composition Moses is told to write and teach directly to the people "in their mouths" (*be-fihem*, v.19). Both objects are called *'ed* ("witness"), but the mechanism differs: the *torah* sits physically beside the ark as a silent witness (v.26), while the *shirah* is memorized and recited, described as something that "will testify" (*ve-'anta*, from H6030, v.21) when calamities occur — an oral, self-executing witness rather than a static deposited document. ## Differences between versions In verse 4, the LXX adds a geographic clause not present in the Hebrew — "τῶν Ἀμορραίων οἳ ἦσαν πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου" ("of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan") — which has no counterpart in the Hebrew *TAHOT* text or the Vulgate at that point. In verse 27, the Hebrew *'af ki-'acharei moti* ("indeed, after my death") is rendered by the LXX as a rhetorical question ("πῶς οὐχὶ καὶ ἔσχατον τοῦ θανάτου μου;"), shifting the Hebrew's asseverative structure into an interrogative one, while the Vulgate ("quanto magis cum mortuus fuero") preser