Deuteronomy 10:3

Summary

Moses recounts making an ark of acacia wood, cutting two stone tablets to replace the first ones, and going up the mountain carrying the two tablets in his hand. The verse is a first-person narrative sequence describing three consecutive actions.

Key words

• 'a.'as ("I made", H6213H) — qal narrative form with waw-consecutive, marking the first sequential action ("and I made").
• 'aron ("ark of", H0727) — masculine singular construct, linking directly to "wood of acacia" that follows.
• 'ef.sol ("I cut out", H6458) — qal narrative form with waw-consecutive, the second action in the chain ("and I cut out").
• ri.sho.nim ("former [tablets]", H7223G) — masculine plural ordinal, used substantively to mean "the first ones," referring back to the earlier tablets without repeating the noun.
• ya.d ("hand", H3027G) + suffix -i ("my", H9020) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, forming "my hand," here in the singular though the tablets are two.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of three waw-consecutive verbs — 'a.'as ("I made", H6213H), 'ef.sol ("I cut out", H6458), and 'a.'al ("I went up", H5927G) — each introduced by the narrative va (H9001). This construction presents the actions as a straightforward temporal sequence: making the ark, cutting the tablets, then climbing the mountain. The object of the first verb, 'aron ("ark of", H0727), stands in construct with 'atzei shittim ("wood of acacia", H6086G + H7848), specifying the material.

The phrase ka-rishonim ("like the former [tablets]", H9004 + H7223G) uses the ordinal rishonim substantively, meaning "the first ones," a compact way of comparing the new tablets to the ones mentioned earlier in the chapter without restating "tablets." The mountain in verse 3 carries a directional he (H9011) attached to ha-har ("the mountain", H2022G), giving the sense "to/toward the mountain" — a grammatical feature not visible in translations that simply render "up the mountain." Finally, the closing clause places sh'nei ha-luchot ("the two tablets", H8147 + H3871) as subject with the preposition be ("in", H9003) plus yadi ("my hand", H3027G + H9020, singular) — the two tablets are said to be in one hand, grammatically, even though English versions often smooth this to plural "hands."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb sequence is "I made [an ark]... I cut out [tablets]... I went up," matching the Vulgate ("Feci... dolassem... ascendi"). The LXX diverges more noticeably: instead of a verb meaning "made," it uses ἐπιστρέψας κατέβην ("having turned, I went down"), and it does not explicitly render "ark" ('aron, H0727) with a corresponding noun, instead saying "from incorruptible woods" (ἐκ ξύλων ἀσήπτων). The Hebrew be-yadi ("in my hand", singular) is rendered by the LXX as ἐπὶ ταῖς χερσίν μου ("upon my hands", plural), and most modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) likewise render it as plural "hands" rather than the grammatically singular Hebrew form.