Deuteronomy 4:18

Summary

The verse continues a list of prohibited images, specifying that no likeness should be made of any creeping creature on the ground, nor of any fish that lives in the waters beneath the earth. It uses the same construct noun twice to introduce two categories of animals: land-crawlers and water-dwellers.

Key words

• tavNit ("a likeness of", H8403) — feminine singular construct noun, repeated twice, each time governing the following noun ("likeness of X"); it structures the verse as a list of forbidden representations.
• romes ("creeping [thing]", H7430) — Qal participle, masculine singular, meaning "the one that creeps"; participles in Hebrew function as verbal nouns, so this word denotes the category of creature by its characteristic action rather than by a fixed noun.
• ba'adamah ("on the ground", H0127G with H9003) — noun with prefixed preposition and article, marking the location where the creeping creature moves.
• dagah ("fish", H1710) — feminine singular noun, second object of tavNit, introducing the aquatic category.
• 'asher ("which", H0834A) — relative particle introducing a clause that further defines dagah, specifying its habitat as "in the waters under the earth."

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel construct phrases, both headed by tavNit ("likeness of"), each followed by kol ("any", H3605) plus a noun denoting a class of creature. The first phrase, tavNit kol-romes ba'adamah, uses a participle (romes) rather than a simple noun to describe the creeping animal — grammatically this frames the creature by its ongoing action ("the one that creeps") rather than as a fixed species name. The prepositional phrase ba'adamah ("on the ground") locates this creeping activity.

The second phrase, tavNit kol-dagah, shifts to fish, introduced by the same construct pattern. Here, a relative clause introduced by 'asher ("which") expands the description: "which is in the waters under the earth" ('asher bammayim mittachat la'aretz). The compound preposition mi-tachat ("from under") plus la'aretz ("to/for the earth") produces the sense "beneath the earth," describing the location of the waters where the fish live. The doubled use of tavNit creates a rhythmic, list-like structure characteristic of legal enumeration, cataloguing categories of living things without naming individual species.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders romes ("the one creeping", H7430) with a relative clause, ὃ ἕρπει ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ("which creeps upon the earth"), making explicit in Greek what the Hebrew participle implies through its verbal form alone. The Vulgate similarly expands to reptilium, quæ moventur in terra ("of creeping things, which move on the earth"), adding the verb moventur not present as a separate word in the Hebrew clause. Both the LXX and Vulgate also render mittachat la'aretz as "under the earth" (ὑποκάτω τῆς γῆς; sub terra), treating the phrase as modifying "earth" directly, while the Hebrew syntax places the waters as the immediate location ("in the waters, from under, to the earth").