Deuteronomy 9:8

Summary

The verse recalls that at Horeb the people provoked Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068) to anger, and as a result Yehovah became angry with them to the point of intending their destruction. It functions as a narrative reminder within Moses' speech, connecting an emotional reaction from the people to a corresponding reaction from Yehovah.

Key words

• hik.tzaf.Tem ("you provoked to anger", H7107) — Hiphil perfect, second person masculine plural: a causative completed action, meaning the people caused anger (made someone angry), not merely felt it themselves.
• i.yit.'a.Naf ("he was angry", H0599) — Hithpael narrative form: a reflexive/intensive stem describing Yehovah's own emotional response, introduced by the narrative vav that links this clause sequentially to the previous one ("and then...").
• hash.Mid ("destroy", H8045) — Hiphil infinitive construct: causative, expressing purpose or result ("to destroy"), dependent on the preposition le ("to", H9005).
• 'et ("", H0853) — appears twice (before Yehovah and before khem, "you"), marking the direct objects of the verbs without adding independent meaning of its own.
• ba.khem ("with you", H9003+H9036) — preposition plus second person plural suffix, indicating the target of Yehovah's anger ("against you").

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel clauses joined by the narrative vav (H9001), which in Biblical Hebrew narrative chains events in sequence. The first clause, u.ve.cho.Rev hik.tzaf.Tem et-Yahweh ("and at Horeb you provoked Yehovah"), uses the Hiphil of hik.tzaf.Tem (H7107), a causative verb form indicating that the people's action produced anger — the grammatical subject causes the emotional state named by the root, rather than simply undergoing it.

The second clause, va.yit.'a.Naf Yahweh ba.khem le.hash.Mid et.khem ("and Yehovah was angry with you, to destroy you"), shifts to the Hithpael of yit.'a.Naf (H0599), describing Yehovah's own anger as a reflexive/internal process. This anger is then followed by the infinitive hash.Mid (H8045), governed by the preposition le (H9005), which expresses purpose: the anger tends toward, or aims at, destruction. The double object marker 'et (H0853) — once for Yehovah as recipient of the provocation, once for "you" as object of the intended destruction — structurally underlines that the same group (the people) is both the agent of the provocation and the target of the resulting reaction.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the purpose clause as iratus delere te voluit ("being angry, he wished/willed to destroy you"), explicitly adding the notion of "willing" (voluit), which is not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew infinitive construction le.hash.Mid. The LXX's ἐξολεθρεῦσαι ὑμᾶς ("to destroy you completely") mirrors the Hebrew infinitive of purpose more directly, without an added verb of volition.