Deuteronomy 32:18

Summary

The verse accuses Israel of neglecting and forgetting the divine source of its existence, described first as tzur ("rock", H6697) who fathered the people, and then as 'el ("God", H410) who brought them into being through labor-like birth. Two parallel verbs of forgetting frame two parallel divine epithets tied to procreation and childbirth.

Key words

• tzur ("[the] rock", H6697) — masculine singular noun, here functioning as an epithet for the divine subject of the sentence, standing in apposition to the verb of begetting that follows.
• yeladkha ("[which] he fathered you", H3205) — qal perfect 3ms with 2ms suffix; the perfect marks a completed past act, and the pronominal suffix folds the object ("you") directly into the verb form.
• teshi ("you forgot", H7876) — the grammar note marks this as a jussive form, though the gloss renders it as a completed act of forgetting/neglecting; it lacks a connecting vav, unlike the following verb.
• tishkach ("you forgot", H7911) — qal, joined by the narrative vav (H9001), which chains this clause to the previous one as a continuing narrative sequence ("and then you forgot").
• mecholelekha ("[who] gave birth to you", H2342) — piel participle, masculine singular, construct, with 2ms suffix; the piel (intensive) stem intensifies the root's meaning of labor/writhing associated with childbirth, and the participle presents this as an ongoing characteristic of the subject ("the one who continually brings you to birth").

What the text says

The verse is built as two balanced half-lines, each pairing a divine epithet with a birth-related verb, followed by a verb of forgetting. In the first half, tzur ("rock") is the subject, and yeladkha — a qal perfect verb meaning "he fathered you" — describes a completed generative act, paired with teshi, the verb of neglect/forgetting. In the second half, 'el ("God") is the subject, and mecholelekha — a piel participle from the root of writhing in labor — presents the divine subject as the one who brought the people to birth through travail, an image distinct from simple fathering. This second verb is a participle rather than a finite past-tense verb, giving it a more durative or characteristic sense ("the one who bears you") compared to the completed act of yeladkha. The two verbs of forgetting, teshi and tishkach, are linked by the narrative vav, presenting the neglect as a continuous or repeated action rather than a single event.

Differences between versions

The LXX and Vulgate both replace tzur ("rock") with theon/Deum ("God"), losing the rock imagery present in the Hebrew and in the RV1909/BSB translations, which retain "Rock"/"Roca." For the second verb, the Hebrew's birth-labor imagery in mecholelekha ("the one giving birth to you") is rendered by the LXX as tou trephontos ("the one nourishing you") and by the Vulgate as creatoris ("creator"), both shifting away from the specific childbirth/labor sense preserved in the Hebrew and reflected in BSB's "gave you birth" and SBLIBRE's "te dio a luz."