Deuteronomy 9:12

Summary

Yehovah speaks to Moses on the mountain, commanding him to descend quickly because the people, whom Moses had brought out of Egypt, have acted corruptly. They have turned away from the commanded path and made themselves a molten image.

Key words

• shichet ("it has acted corruptly", H7843) — piel perfect, third person masculine singular; the intensive stem gives a forceful sense of corruption or ruin, describing a completed state affecting "your people" (amekha).
• hotze'ta ("you brought out", H3318H) — hiphil perfect, causative; frames Moses as the causative agent of Israel's exodus, a relative clause modifying amekha ("your people").
• saru ("they have turned aside", H5493I) — qal perfect, third person plural; marks a completed act of deviation, paired with the infinitive maher ("quickly", H4118B) to intensify the speed of the turning.
• tzivitim ("I commanded them", H6680) — piel perfect, first person singular with third person plural suffix; the intensive stem underscores the directive force of the original command now violated.
• masekhah ("a molten image", H4541A) — feminine singular noun; names the object of the people's corrupt action, the concrete result of "they have made" (asu, H6213H).

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav-consecutive form va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) attached to Yehovah (H3068G), establishing this as continuous divine speech within the larger narrative chain. The address to Moses uses two consecutive imperatives, qum ("arise", H6965B) and red ("go down", H3381), reinforced by the piel infinitive maher ("quickly", H4118B) — grammatically an infinitive but functioning adverbially to intensify the urgency of descent, paired with mi-zeh ("from here", H2088).

The causal clause introduced by ki (H3588A) explains the urgency: shichet amekha ("your people has acted corruptly"). The relative clause asher hotze'ta mi-Mitzrayim ("whom you brought out from Egypt") specifically attributes the exodus action to Moses via the hiphil perfect hotze'ta, not to Yehovah directly in this clause. The subsequent perfect verbs saru ("they have turned aside") and asu ("they have made") describe two completed actions: deviation from ha-derekh ("the way", H1870G) that was commanded (tzivitim, using a piel perfect with pronominal suffix "them"), and the fabrication of masekhah ("a molten image") for themselves (lahem, H9038).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shichet ("has acted corruptly") as ἠνόμησεν ("has acted lawlessly/against the law"), a term emphasizing violation of law rather than the Hebrew's broader sense of corruption or ruin. The Vulgate uses deseruerunt ("they have abandoned/forsaken") for saru ("they have turned aside"), a stronger term of desertion than the Hebrew's more neutral verb of turning aside. The Vulgate also renders masekhah as conflatile ("something cast/molten"), matching the Hebrew's material sense, while the LXX's χώνευμα similarly denotes a cast or molten object.