Deuteronomy 32:13

Summary

The verse describes Yehovah causing Israel to ride over elevated terrain, to eat the produce of the fields, and to be nourished with honey from rock and oil from flint. The imagery presents provision and abundance emerging from the harshest terrain (rock, flint) rather than cultivated land.

Key words

• yarkivehu ("he caused to ride", H7392) — hiphil causative verb with 3ms suffix "him": the subject (Yehovah, from prior verses) makes the object ride, not merely permits riding.
• bamotei ("high places of", H1116) — feminine plural construct, linking to aretz ("land", H0776G) to form "the high places of the land," a fixed poetic phrase for elevated terrain.
• yenikehu ("he suckled him", H3243H) — hiphil causative narrative verb with 3ms suffix: the subject causes the object to nurse, an image of active feeding rather than passive discovery of food.
• chalmish ("flint of", H2496) construct + tzur ("rock", H6697H) — two nouns for "rock/stone" placed in construct, producing an intensified or doubled image of hard stone.
• sela' ("a rock", H5553H) — parallels tzur, forming a poetic pair (rock/flint-rock) that frames the honey-and-oil imagery.

What the text says

The verse consists of three parallel clauses joined by narrative vav (H9001), each with Yehovah as the implicit subject acting on a 3ms object ("him"), continuing the referent from the preceding verses of the Song. The verbs form a causative chain: yarkivehu ("he caused him to ride," H7392) is hiphil, meaning the subject actively places the object upon the heights, not that the object mounts on his own. This is followed by a plain qal narrative verb, yo'khal ("he ate," H0398), shifting briefly to the object's own action of eating the "fruits of the field" (tenuvot sadai, H8570/H7704M, both construct forms). The third clause returns to hiphil causative force with yenikehu ("he suckled him," H3243H), again emphasizing Yehovah's active role in feeding, this time with the striking source-pairing of "honey from rock" (devash mi-sela') and "oil from flint of rock" (shemen me-chalmish tzur), each phrase using the preposition min (H9006) to mark point of origin. The doubling of terms for stone (sela' and chalmish tzur) intensifies the improbability of the image: sustenance drawn from the hardest, most barren surfaces.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the object as plural (αὐτοὺς, "them") where the Hebrew has a singular suffix (-hu, "him") throughout. The LXX also omits an equivalent for bamotei aretz ("high places of the land"), moving directly to "produce of the fields" without the riding/heights clause found in the Hebrew and Vulgate ("super excelsam terram... ut comederet fructus agrorum"). Additionally, the LXX uses an active verb for the object ("ἐθήλασαν," "they sucked") where the Hebrew hiphil yenikehu casts the subject as causing the suckling, a difference in grammatical voice not preserved in the Greek.