Deuteronomy 32:42

Summary

Deuteronomy 32:42 describes Yehovah declaring that his arrows and sword will be saturated with blood and flesh — specifically the blood of those slain, of captives, and coming "from the head" of the enemy's leaders. It is a war-oracle image portraying total defeat of adversaries.

Key words

• 'ash.Kir ("I will make drunk", H7937) — Hiphil imperfect, causative: the arrows are made to "drink" blood, an image built on the verb for intoxication rather than a literal act of drinking.
• cha.Lal ("the slain", H2491A) — masculine singular adjective/noun used substantively for a person killed in battle; here in construct relation with dam ("blood", H1818), producing "blood of the slain."
• par.'ot ("leaders of", H6546) — feminine plural construct, meaning chiefs or commanders; it stands in a chain governed by rosh ("head of", H7218A), itself in construct.
• rosh ("head of", H7218A) — masculine singular construct; together with par'ot and 'oyev ("enemy", H0341) it forms a triple construct chain: "head of leaders of enemy."
• to.Khal ("it will devour", H0398) — Qal imperfect, third person feminine, agreeing with charbi ("my sword", H2719), giving the sword itself the active role of consuming flesh.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel poetic lines. The first: 'ash.Kir chitzay midam ("I will make my arrows drunk from blood") pairs a causative verb with a bloodletting image applied to arrows. The second: vecharbi tochal basar ("and my sword will devour flesh") assigns an active, almost animate verb — to.Khal, "it will devour" — to the sword, continuing the parallel structure of weapon-as-agent.

The following clause piles up construct chains: midam chalal veshivyah merosh par'ot oyev — "from the blood of the slain and captive, from the head of the leaders of the enemy." The repeated preposition min ("from", H9006) ties both weapon-clauses to a single source: the blood and bodies of the defeated. The final phrase layers three nouns in construct (rosh + par'ot + 'oyev), a chain uncommon in prose that concentrates meaning into "the head of the enemy's leaders," specifying the object as high-ranking, not merely ordinary combatants.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders par'ot as "nudati... capitis" ("of the bared/stripped head"), differing from the Hebrew's more direct sense of "leaders/commanders" and from the LXX's ἀρχόντων ("rulers"), which matches the Hebrew construct chain closely. The RV1909 diverges further, translating the same phrase as "venganzas de enemigo" ("vengeances of enemy"), losing the "head/leaders" construct sense found in the Hebrew, LXX, and other versions. The LXX text as given also lacks an explicit rendering paralleling vecharbi tochal basar ("and my sword will devour flesh"), compressing the imagery of arrows and captivity into a shorter clause than the Hebrew's two-part structure.