Deuteronomy 9:15
וָאֵפֶן וָֽאֵרֵד מִן־הָהָר וְהָהָר בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ וּשְׁנֵי לֻחֹת הַבְּרִית עַל שְׁתֵּי יָדָֽי׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
Tap a word to see its entry
✦ The same verse in five languages
וָאֵ֗פֶן וָֽאֵרֵד֙ מִן־הָהָ֔ר וְהָהָ֖ר בֹּעֵ֣ר בָּאֵ֑שׁ וּשְׁנֵי֙ לֻחֹ֣ת הַבְּרִ֔ית עַ֖ל שְׁתֵּ֥י יָדָֽי׃
καὶ ἐπιστρέψας κατέβην ἐκ τοῦ ὄρους, καὶτὸ ὄρος ἐκαίετο πυρὶ ἕως τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, καὶ αἱ δύο πλάκες ἐπὶ ταῖς δυσὶ χερσίν μου.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Cumque de monte ardente descenderem, et duas tabulas fœderis utraque tenerem manu,
Me volví y bajé del monte, y el monte ardía en llamas. Las dos tablas de la alianza estaban en mis dos manos.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y volví y descendí del monte, el cual ardía en fuego, con las tablas del pacto en mis dos manos.
So I went back down the mountain while it was blazing with fire, with the two tablets of the covenant in my hands.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Moses recounts turning and descending from the mountain, which was burning with fire, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his two hands. The verse is a first-person narrative report describing both the physical setting (the burning mountain) and the object being carried (the tablets).
Key words
- 'E.fen ("I turned", H6437G) — qal narrative verb, first person, opening the sequence of action with "and then I turned."
- 'e.Red ("I went down", H3381) — qal narrative verb, first person, continuing the chain: "and then I went down."
- bo.'Er ("was burning", H1197A) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the mountain as continuously "burning," a durative state rather than a completed action.
- lu.Chot ("tablets of", H3871) — feminine plural construct noun, grammatically bound to ha.Berit ("the covenant", H1285), forming "tablets of the covenant."
- ya.Da + i ("my hands", H3027G + H9020) — dual construct noun with first-person suffix, marking the two hands as a paired unit ("my two hands").
What the text says
The verse opens with two chained narrative verbs, va'Efen ("and I turned") and va'eRed ("and I went down"), both in the qal narrative form marking sequential first-person action: "and then I turned, and then I went down." This construction, typical of Hebrew narrative prose, presents the actions as a continuous sequence rather than separate events.
The mountain is described using a participle, bo'Er ("burning"), rather than a finite past-tense verb. This grammatical choice presents the burning as an ongoing state observed at the moment of descent — "the mountain was [in a state of] burning" — rather than a single completed event. The phrase ba'Esh ("with the fire", H0784) specifies the means of burning.
The tablets are introduced through a construct chain: shenei luchot habberit ("the two of the tablets of the covenant"), stacking two construct relationships — first "two of tablets," then "tablets of the covenant" — to produce the compound phrase "the two tablets of the covenant." Their location is marked by 'al shetei yadai ("on the two of my hands"), using the same dual-construct pattern seen with luchot, emphasizing pairs: two tablets on two hands.
Differences between versions
The LXX adds a phrase not present in the Hebrew: "burning with fire until heaven" (ἕως τοῦ οὐρανοῦ), an extension not found in the Hebrew text, which only states the mountain "was burning with fire." The Vulgate renders the mountain's burning with the participle ardente ("burning"), aligning with the Hebrew participle bo'er, but shifts the syntax so that "descending from the burning mountain" and "holding the tablets" become subordinate clauses under Cumque ("and when"), differing from the Hebrew's paratactic (chained "and...and...") structure.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.