Deuteronomy 32:15

Summary

The verse describes Jeshurun (a poetic name for the people) growing physically fat and then rebelling like a well-fed animal that kicks against its owner. It shifts to a direct second-person address describing the fattening in more detail, then returns to third person to describe the abandonment of the God who made him and the treatment with contempt of the "Rock" of his rescue.

Key words

• Yeshurun ("Jeshurun", H3484) — proper name, used here as a poetic designation for the addressed group; it is grammatically the subject of the first two narrative verbs.
• yishman ("he grew fat", H8080) — qal narrative form, third person, opening the sequence of consequence ("and then he grew fat").
• shamanta ("you have grown fat", H8080) — same root as above but shifted to second-person perfect, creating a direct address in the middle of a third-person narration.
• yitosh ("he abandoned", H5203) — qal narrative, third person, resuming the third-person narrative after the second-person insertion.
• yenabel ("he treated with contempt", H5034A) — piel (intensive) narrative form, indicating an intensified or deliberate action of scorn, not just simple neglect.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — yishman, yibʿat, yitosh, yenabel — all third-person, describing a sequence of events centered on "Jeshurun." Embedded within this chain, at words 6–8, the grammar shifts abruptly to second-person perfect forms — shamanta ("you have grown fat", H8080), ʿavita ("you have become bloated", H5666), kasita ("you have become gorged", H3780) — addressing the subject directly before the narrative resumes in the third person with yitosh. This alternation between "he" and "you" is a feature of the Hebrew syntax itself; it cannot be reproduced by translations that render the entire verse in a single grammatical person.

The final clause uses a construct chain, tzur yeshuʿato ("rock of his salvation", H6697 + H3444 + H9023), where tzur ("rock") stands in construct relation to yeshuʿato ("his salvation"), literally "rock of his salvation-of-him." The verb yenabel (H5034A), in the piel stem, marks an intensified action of scorn or degradation, distinguishing it from a simple neutral abandonment.

Differences between versions

The LXX replaces the name Yeshurun (H3484) with "Ἰακὼβ" (Jacob) and "ὁ ἠγαπημένος" ("the beloved one"), an interpretive rendering not found in the Hebrew text. The Vulgate similarly uses "dilectus" ("beloved") rather than transliterating the proper name. Both LXX and Vulgate maintain a consistent third-person voice throughout the verse, smoothing over the Hebrew's shift into second-person forms (shamanta, ʿavita, kasita). For the final verb yenabel ("he treated with contempt", H5034A), the LXX uses "ἀπέστη" ("he departed/withdrew"), a softer rendering than the Hebrew's stronger sense of contemptuous treatment, while the Vulgate's "recessit" ("he withdrew") follows the LXX's sense rather than the Hebrew's.