Deuteronomy 4:15

Summary

The verse instructs the audience to guard themselves carefully, giving as the reason that they saw no visible form on the day Yehovah spoke to them at Horeb, from within the fire. It links a command of vigilance to the absence of a seen image at the moment of divine speech.

Key words

• nish.mar.Tem ("you will take heed", H8104H) — niphal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural; the niphal stem gives a reflexive/passive nuance, "guard yourselves," continuing the narrative sequence begun with the vav.
• me.'Od ("exceedingly", H3966) — intensifies the verb of guarding, marking the degree of care required.
• naf.sho.tei.Khem ("your selves", H5315I + H9026) — feminine plural noun in construct with a 2nd person masculine plural suffix; nefesh here refers to the persons themselves, the object of the guarding.
• re.'i.Tem ("you saw", H7200G) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural, a completed action stating what was (not) perceived.
• te.mu.Nah ("form", H8544) — feminine singular noun, the thing not seen; paired with kol ("any", H3605) in construct, "any form" or "form of any kind."

What the text says

The verse opens with a vav-consecutive attached to nish.mar.Tem, continuing a chain of instruction from the preceding context. The niphal stem of this verb gives the sense of self-directed guarding — the people are to watch over themselves, not merely be watched over. The object of this guarding is naf.sho.tei.Khem, literally "your souls/selves," a plural construct noun with a possessive suffix, indicating the persons as a collective body rather than an abstract inner faculty.

The causal clause introduced by ki ("for", H3588A) explains the command: lo' re.'i.Tem kol-temunah, "you did not see any form." The construct chain kol-temunah emphasizes totality — no form of any kind was seen. This clause is anchored temporally by be.yom dibber Yehovah aleikhem, "on the day Yehovah spoke to you," using the piel perfect di.Ber ("spoke", H1696G), an intensive stem describing completed speech. The location is doubly specified: be.Chorev ("at Horeb") and mi.tokh ha.'Esh ("from the middle of the fire"), with the construct noun Tokh ("middle of", H8432) placing the fire as the source or medium from which the speech proceeded, without visual form emerging alongside it.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders temunah ("form", H8544) as homoioma ("likeness"), a term with a slightly different semantic range than the Hebrew "form." The LXX and BSB also add "ἐν τῷ ὄρει" / "at Horeb" combined with mountain terminology not present as a separate noun in the Hebrew text at this point (the Hebrew simply has be.Chorev, "at Horeb," without a word for "mountain" here). The BSB restructures the clause order, placing the causal clause first ("since you saw no form...") and the command ("be careful") last, whereas the Hebrew places the command first and the reason afterward.