Deuteronomy 9:17

וָאֶתְפֹּשׂ בִּשְׁנֵי הַלֻּחֹת וָֽאַשְׁלִכֵם מֵעַל שְׁתֵּי יָדָי וָאֲשַׁבְּרֵם לְעֵינֵיכֶֽם׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וָאֶתְפֹּשׂ֙ בִּשְׁנֵ֣י הַלֻּחֹ֔ת וָֽאַשְׁלִכֵ֔ם מֵעַ֖ל שְׁתֵּ֣י יָדָ֑י וָאֲשַׁבְּרֵ֖ם לְעֵינֵיכֶֽם׃

Greek (Septuagint)

καὶ ἐπιλαβόμενος τῶν δύο πλοκῶν ἔρριψα αὐτὰς ἀπὸ τῶν δύο χειρῶν μου καὶ συνέτριψα ἐναντίον ὑμῶν.

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

projeci tabulas de manibus meis, confregique eas in conspectu vestro.

Spanish

Tomé las dos tablas, las arrojé de mis dos manos y las rompí ante sus ojos.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Entonces tomé las dos tablas, y arrojélas de mis dos manos, y quebrélas delante de vuestros ojos.

English

So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, shattering them before your eyes.

✦ What the text says

Summary

Moses recounts three consecutive actions: he seized the two stone tablets, threw them from his hands, and broke them in front of the people. The verse is a first-person narrative sequence describing the destruction of the tablets after the incident of the golden calf.

Key words

'et.Pos ("I seized", H8610) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), marking the first sequential action of the account.
lu.Chot ("tablets", H3871) — feminine plural noun with definite article ha ("the", H9009), identifying the specific object already known from context.
'ash.li.Khe ("I threw", H7993) — hiphil (causative) narrative form, indicating Moses caused the tablets to leave his hands, not a passive falling.
ya.Da ("hands", H3027G) — dual construct form with suffix i ("my", H9020), specifying exactly two hands, matching the two tablets.
'a.sha.be.Re ("I broke", H7665) — piel (intensive) narrative form, denoting a thorough or forceful breaking rather than a simple action.

What the text says

The verse is built on three verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001), which in Biblical Hebrew chains successive actions into a single flowing account: "and I seized... and I threw... and I broke." Each verb shifts stem to intensify the action: 'et.Pos is a plain qal (simple seizing), 'ash.li.Khe is hiphil (causative throwing, emphasizing that Moses actively cast the tablets away), and 'a.sha.be.Re is piel (intensive breaking, suggesting a more forceful or thorough shattering than a basic qal verb would convey). This escalation in verbal stems — simple, causative, intensive — mirrors the escalation of the action itself, from holding to discarding to destroying.

The dual forms she.Tei... ya.Da ("two hands") and the earlier sh.Nei... ha.Lu.Chot ("two tablets") create a numerical symmetry in the sentence: two tablets held in two hands. The final phrase le.'ei.nei.Khem ("to the eyes of you all", combining H9005, H5869J, H9026) places the action before the eyes of the audience, making the breaking a witnessed, public event rather than a private one.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders lu.Chot ("tablets", H3871) as πλοκῶν ("plaits" or "twists"), a divergence from the Hebrew term for tablets, though ἔρριψα ("I threw") and συνέτριψα ("I broke together/shattered") correspond to 'ash.li.Khe and 'a.sha.be.Re respectively. The Vulgate omits an explicit equivalent for the initial seizing verb ('et.Pos), beginning directly with "projeci tabulas" ("I threw the tablets"), where the Hebrew has three distinct sequential verbs and the Vulgate compresses the action into two.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.