Deuteronomy 32:23

Summary

Deuteronomy 32:23 presents Yehovah declaring an intention to accumulate misfortunes against a group ("them") and to exhaust his arrows against them. The verse uses two parallel first-person verbs describing an intensified, deliberate action against the referents.

Key words

• 'as.Peh ("I will catch up/gather", H5595) — Hiphil imperfect, causative form, first person singular, indicating an active, ongoing or future gathering action.
• ra.'ot ("calamities", H7451C) — feminine plural noun, the direct object being amassed.
• chi.Tza ("arrows", H2671) — masculine plural construct noun, linked to the following suffix to form "my arrows."
• 'a.kha.leh ("I will use up", H3615J) — Piel imperfect, intensive form, first person singular, denoting a thorough or complete exhausting action.
• mov / m ("them", H9038) — pronominal suffix (masculine plural) attached twice (in 'a.Lei.mov and Bam), marking the recipients of both actions.

What the text says

The Hebrew verse divides into two parallel clauses, each built on a first-person imperfect verb followed by a prepositional phrase with a pronominal suffix meaning "them." The first clause, 'as.Peh 'a.Lei.mov ra.'ot ("I will catch up/gather calamities on them"), uses the Hiphil stem of H5595, which carries a causative nuance — not merely "gathering" but actively bringing about an accumulation. The object ra.'ot ("calamities", H7451C) is plural, suggesting multiple or repeated misfortunes rather than a single event.

The second clause, chi.Tzai 'a.kha.leh-Bam ("my arrows I will use up on them"), places the object chi.Tza ("arrows", H2671) with the first-person suffix -i before the verb, a construction that fronts the object for emphasis in the Hebrew word order. The verb 'a.kha.leh is in the Piel stem, an intensive form of the root H3615, meaning here "to use up completely" or "to exhaust" — implying the arrows will be spent entirely, not just shot occasionally. Both clauses share the same grammatical person (first singular) and the same object suffix (-mo / -m, third plural), reinforcing structural parallelism between "calamities" and "arrows" as twin instruments directed at the same target.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the second clause with συνπολεμήσω ("I will make war together" or "I will fight jointly"), differing from the Hebrew 'a.kha.leh ("I will use up/exhaust"). The Vulgate's complebo ("I will complete/fulfill") also diverges from the intensive "exhausting" sense of the Piel verb, leaning toward a notion of completion rather than depletion. The English and Spanish translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) follow the Hebrew sense of spending or using up the arrows, aligning more closely with the Masoretic Text than with the LXX's "fighting" imagery.