Deuteronomy 32:25
מִחוּץ תְּשַׁכֶּל־חֶרֶב וּמֵחֲדָרִים אֵימָה גַּם־בָּחוּר גַּם־בְּתוּלָה יוֹנֵק עִם־אִישׁ שֵׂיבָֽה׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
Tap a word to see its entry
✦ The same verse in five languages
מִחוּץ֙ תְּשַׁכֶּל־חֶ֔רֶב וּמֵחֲדָרִ֖ים אֵימָ֑ה גַּם־בָּחוּר֙ גַּם־בְּתוּלָ֔ה יוֹנֵ֖ק עִם־אִ֥ישׁ שֵׂיבָֽה׃
ἔξωθεν ἀτεκνώσει αὐτοὺς μάχαιρα, κα ἐκ τῶν ταμείων νεανίσκος σὺν παθένῳ,
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Foris vastabit eos gladius, et intus pavor, juvenem simul ac virginem, lactentem cum homine sene.
Fuera la espada desolará, y en las habitaciones, el terror tanto en el joven como en la virgen, el bebé lactante con el hombre canoso.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
De fuera desolará la espada, y dentro de las cámaras el espanto; así al mancebo como á la doncella, al que mama como el hombre cano.
Outside, the sword will take their children, and inside, terror will strike the young man and the young woman, the infant and the gray-haired man.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse describes destruction affecting all generations without distinction: the sword brings childlessness from outside, terror strikes from inside the rooms, and it names pairs of victims — young man and young woman, nursing infant and gray-haired elder.
Key words
- te.sha.kel ("it will make childless", H7921A) — piel imperfect, an intensive verb form indicating the sword actively causes loss of children, not merely killing.
- Chutz ("outside", H2351) — masculine singular noun marking spatial contrast with cha.da.Rim, setting up an outside/inside structure for the verse.
- cha.da.Rim ("inner rooms", H2315) — masculine plural noun, the interior spaces where 'ei.Mah ("terror", H0367) operates, paired against the exterior domain of the sword.
- gam...gam ("both...as well as", H1571) — repeated adverb creating a merism that joins ba.Chur ("young man", H0970) and be.tu.Lah ("young woman", H1330) as a single category of victims.
- 'ish sei.Vah ("a person of gray hair", H0376G + H7872) — construct chain literally "man of gray-hair," describing an elderly person through a possessive-type noun relationship rather than a single adjective.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence splits into two parallel clauses built on a spatial opposition. The first clause places mi-Chutz ("from outside", H9006+H2351) before its verb te.sha.kel, so the location is emphasized before the action: it is specifically from the outside that the sword operates. The second clause mirrors this with me-cha.da.Rim ("from the inner rooms", H9006+H2315) placed before 'ei.Mah, though here no verb is stated — the noun 'ei.Mah stands alone, implying the same governing sense of causing loss or fear, carried over from the parallel structure.
The second half of the verse lists four types of people using two merisms joined by gam...gam: ba.Chur paired with be.tu.Lah, and yo.Nek ("a suckling-child", H3243J) paired with 'ish sei.Vah. The preposition 'im ("with", H5973A) links the last pair grammatically, while the first pair is joined only by the gam...gam construction. This creates two grammatically distinct types of pairing within the same list, though both express totality across age and gender.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders the outside/inside contrast as ἔξωθεν ("from outside") and ἐκ τῶν ταμείων ("from the chambers"), matching the Hebrew spatial structure, but the Swete text supplied appears truncated, showing only νεανίσκος σὺν παρθένῳ ("young man with virgin") without an explicit equivalent for yo.Nek and 'ish sei.Vah. The Vulgate uses pavor ("dread") for 'ei.Mah, and phrases the final pair as lactentem cum homine sene ("nursing child with an old man"), preserving the 'im-construction found in the Hebrew for that specific pair.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.