Deuteronomy 5:24

Summary

The Israelites report to Moses that they have seen Yehovah's glory and greatness and heard his voice from the fire, and that on this same day they have witnessed something remarkable: that a human being can hear God speak and still remain alive.

Key words

• to.me.Ru ("you said", H0559) — qal perfect, 2nd person plural, introduces the people's direct speech to Moses.
• her.'A.nu ("he has shown us", H7200) — hiphil (causative) perfect: Yehovah is the causal agent who "caused to be seen," not merely someone who was seen.
• ke.vo.D / ga.de.L / ko.L (H3519, H1433, H6963) — three construct nouns ("glory of," "greatness of," "voice of"), each taking the suffix -o ("his"), stacked in series with the object marker 'et before each, marking three distinct direct objects of perception.
• ye.da.Ber ("he speaks", H1696) — piel imperfect, denoting an ongoing or repeated/intensive act of speaking, contrasted with the completed perfects used earlier in the verse.
• va.Chai ("and he will live", H2421) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), grammatically continuing the imperfect ye.da.Ber to express a resulting or expected outcome: "he speaks... and he lives."

What the text says

The verse is built as reported speech introduced by va-to.me.Ru ("and you said"), followed by the interjection hen ("here!" or "behold"), which draws attention to what follows. The core claim has two parts, each governed by a perfect-tense verb of perception: her.'A.nu ("he has shown us") governs the objects kevodo ("his glory") and gadlo ("his greatness"), while shama'nu ("we have heard") governs qolo ("his voice"), specified as coming mi-tokh ha-'esh ("from the middle of the fire"). Each object noun is a construct form bound to the third-person suffix -o ("his"), and each is marked with the untranslated object particle 'et, a grammatical marker with no independent meaning but signaling that these are direct objects of the preceding verbs.

The final clause shifts tense: ki-yedabber 'Elohim et-ha-'adam va-chai uses an imperfect verb (yedabber, "he speaks/will speak") followed by a vav-consecutive perfect (va-chai, "and he lives/survives"). This construction expresses a general or hypothetical statement — that when God speaks with a human being, that person survives — rather than a single completed past event, differing grammatically from the perfect-tense reports of what was seen and heard earlier in the verse.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew marks three separate objects (glory, greatness, voice) each with its own construct-suffix pair. The LXX text as given renders "τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ" and then "τὴν αὐτοῦ ἠκούσαμεν" without a clear noun for "greatness," producing an incomplete or truncated parallel to the Hebrew's three-part list. The Vulgate preserves three items ("majestatem et magnitudinem... vocem") but reorders them, pairing "majestatem et magnitudinem" together before treating "vocem" separately. For the final clause, the Hebrew's vav-consecutive va-chai ("and he lives") is rendered as a future, ζήσεται ("he will live") in the LXX and as a subjunctive-like perfect, vixerit ("he might have lived" / "shall have lived"), in the Vulgate — both shifting the aspectual nuance of the Hebrew construction.