Deuteronomy 25:18

Summary

The verse recounts, within a relative clause depending on the preceding verse, how Amalek encountered Israel on the road and struck the rear ranks of stragglers while the people were exhausted and weary, adding that this action was done without fear of God.

Key words

• qarekha ("it met you", H7136A) — qal perfect, 3rd person, with 2nd-person masculine suffix; a completed action of "meeting/encountering" that opens the clause.
• yezanev ("it attacked in the rear", H2179) — piel narrative form, intensive stem, describing a forceful strike against the "tail" (rear) of the marching column.
• nechshalim ("stragglers", H2826) — niphal participle, masculine plural; describes those who had become weakened/fallen behind, using a passive-type stem that marks a state resulting from an unspecified cause.
• 'ayef ("exhausted", H5889) and yagea' ("weary", H3023) — two adjectives in apposition describing the physical condition of "you" ('atah, H0859A) at the time of the attack.
• yare' ("it feared", H3372G) — qal perfect, 3rd person, negated by lo (H3808); paired with Elohim (H0430G), a grammatically plural noun taking a singular verb, referring to the absence of fear toward God.

What the text says

The clause is introduced by the relative particle 'asher ("that", H0834A), linking this verse to a prior reference (the memory of what happened). The narrative unfolds through a chain of perfect and vav-consecutive verbs: first qarekha ("it met you"), a qal perfect describing the initial encounter, then the vav-prefixed yezanev ("and it attacked in the rear"), a piel form that intensifies the action into a targeted strike against the "tail" of the group. The object of this strike is specified by kol hannechshalim 'achareikha ("all the stragglers behind you"), where the niphal participle nechshalim presents these people not as active stragglers but as those who had become weakened, without stating who or what weakened them.

The disjunctive clause ve'atah 'ayef veyagea' ("and you were exhausted and weary") uses two plain adjectives rather than verbs, shifting from narrative action to a description of physical state at the moment of attack. The final clause, velo yare' Elohim ("and it did not fear God"), returns to a qal perfect verb, with Elohim — morphologically plural — governing a singular verb form, a common pattern when referring to God as singular referent despite the plural noun shape.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yezanev as ἔκοψεν... τὴν οὐραγίαν ("cut off the rear guard"), a specific military phrase, and translates nechshalim as τοὺς κοπιῶντας ("the ones toiling/weary"), shifting the niphal sense of "stragglers" toward a description closer to fatigue. The Vulgate renders nechshalim as "extremos agminis tui, qui lassi residebant" ("the last of your column, who wearied were remaining behind"), adding the verb "residebant" ("were remaining/sitting"), not present in the Hebrew wording. Both LXX and Vulgate preserve the singular verb form for the final clause about fearing God, matching the Hebrew's singular agreement with the plural noun Elohim.