Notes for Deut 1:43-46

1. The phrase "and beat you down" is captured in a single Hebrew verb, wayyakketu, a verb which basically means to 'crush into fragments' as wheat is crush in a mill. It is interesting to note that the other Hebrew words may be revocalized to suggest that they were being crushed like barley (seo'ra for se'ir) through a sieve (herem for hormah). Of the 17 occurrences of the root ktt, "crush," only six are used in the sense of defeat in a miliatary contexts; the majority speaks of breaking down things into fragments.

2. A single word, as in this case, can make a complete predication in Heb. This is so because the form of a verb usually carries with it prefixes and/or suffixes for the subject and/or object.