Deuteronomy 32:38

Summary

This verse continues a rhetorical taunt about the foreign gods that Israel had turned to — described as gods who received the fat of sacrifices and the wine of drink-offerings, and sarcastically challenged to rise up and provide protection. The verse pivots from describing past action (eating, drinking) to a mocking summons (arise, help, be a shelter).

Key words

• 'asher ("which", H0834A) — relative particle linking this clause to the gods mentioned in the preceding verses; it introduces a description of what those gods received.
• chelev ("fat of", H2459) — construct noun beginning a chain (fat of / sacrifices of / their), typical of Hebrew's stacking of nouns in construct relationships.
• yo'khelu ("they ate", H0398) — qal imperfect, third person plural; here the imperfect expresses repeated or habitual past action ("they used to eat"), not future action.
• yaqumu ("let them arise", H6965B) — same imperfect form as above, but functioning here with jussive force ("let them arise"), marking the shift from description to command/challenge.
• sitrah ("a shelter", H5643B) — feminine singular noun; the form carries a final -ah ending, a variant spelling of the more common masculine noun for "shelter/hiding place."

What the text says

The verse opens with a relative clause built on stacked construct nouns — chelev zivchei... yein nesikham ("the fat of the sacrifices of... the wine of the drink-offering of...") — describing what these gods received: the fat and the wine, both marked with the third-person plural suffix -mo/-m ("their"). The verbs yo'khelu ("they ate") and yishtu ("they drank") are grammatically imperfect, a form that in Biblical Hebrew can denote ongoing or habitual past action rather than future tense, so the sense is "they used to eat... they used to drink."

The second half of the verse shifts grammatically without any new subject being stated: yaqumu ("let them arise") reuses the imperfect form but now carries jussive force — a command or wish rather than a description — continued by ya'ezeru-khem ("and let them help you," with the vav-prefixed imperfect marking continuation) and yehi ("let it be"), a true jussive from the root H1961. The clause ends with sitrah ("a shelter") standing alone as a predicate noun, completing the wish "let it be over you a shelter."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew and the Vulgate use third-person plural verbs for the eating and drinking (yo'khelu, comedebant — "they ate/drank," referring to the gods), while the LXX renders these as second-person plural (ēsthiete, epinete — "you ate/drank"), shifting the addressee of that clause from the gods to the audience being spoken to.