Deuteronomy 4:33

Summary

The verse poses a rhetorical question: has any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking from the middle of fire, as "you" (addressed in second person) once heard it, and survived? The Hebrew grammar embeds a shift between third-person ("a people... has it heard") and second-person address ("as you have heard"), then returns to a third-person verb for the final clause.

Key words

• Sha.ma' ("has it heard", H8085G) — qal perfect, third-person masculine singular, marked by the interrogative particle ha- (H9008) to form a yes/no question opening the verse.
• 'Elohim ("a god", H0430G) — masculine plural noun functioning here with singular sense ("a god" rather than "gods"), governed by the preceding construct kol ("voice of", H6963A).
• medaber ("speaking", H1696G) — piel participle, masculine singular, describing the god as actively/intensively speaking, modifying the construct phrase "voice of a god."
• shama'ta ("you have heard", H8085G) — qal perfect, second-person masculine singular, shifting the grammatical subject from the third-person "people" to a direct second-person address ("you").
• vayechi ("has it lived?", H2421) — qal verb with narrative vav (H9001), returning to third-person masculine singular, continuing the rhetorical question begun with Sha.ma'.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the interrogative ha- attached to Sha.ma' ("has it heard", H8085G), establishing a question whose grammatical subject is 'am ("a people", H5971A), a masculine singular collective noun. The object of hearing is a construct chain: kol 'Elohim ("voice of a god", H6963A + H0430G), further specified by the participle medaber ("speaking", H1696G) and the phrase mitokh ha'esh ("from the middle of the fire", H8432/H0784) — locating the speech as originating within fire.

The comparative clause ka'asher shama'ta 'atah ("as you have heard", H0834D + H8085G + H0859A) shifts the grammatical person from third ("a people... has it heard") to second ("you have heard"), directly addressing an individual or group within the same sentence that began with a third-person collective noun. The final verb, vayechi ("has it lived?", H2421), carries a narrative vav (H9001) but returns to third-person masculine singular, grammatically matching the earlier "a people" ('am) rather than the intervening second-person "you." This produces a question with mixed grammatical persons: the people is asked about in the third person, while the comparison is made in the second person, and the outcome ("lived") is again phrased in the third person.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'Elohim ("a god", H0430G) as θεοῦ ζῶντος ("of the living God"), adding the qualifier "living," which has no separate lexical counterpart in the Hebrew construct phrase kol 'Elohim. The Vulgate's Dei ("of God") does not include this addition, staying closer to the Hebrew's unmarked 'Elohim.

Regarding the final verb vayechi ("has it lived?", H2421, third-person), both the LXX (καὶ ἔζησας, "and you lived") and the Vulgate (et vixisti, "and you lived") render this in the second person, matching the earlier "you" from shama'ta, rather than preserving the Hebrew's shift back to third-person grammatical agreement with 'am ("a people").