Exodus 15:14

Summary

The verse describes two parallel reactions to what has been heard: foreign peoples tremble, and the inhabitants of Philistia are seized by anguish. Both halves of the verse use a similar grammatical pattern of subject/cause followed by a verb of physical reaction.

Key words

• sha.me.'U ("they have heard", H8085G) — qal perfect, marking a completed action: the hearing has already taken place before the trembling begins.
• yir.ga.Zu ("they tremble", H7264) — qal imperfect with paragogic nun (H9013) attached, an ending that adds emphasis or solemnity to the verb form, shifting from the completed "heard" to an ongoing/resulting "tremble."
• chil ("anguish", H2427A) — a noun placed before its verb, an inverted word order (object-verb instead of the more common verb-subject) that puts emphasis on the anguish itself as the acting force.
• 'a.Chaz ("it has seized", H0270) — qal perfect; the anguish is presented as having already taken firm hold, paired grammatically with the preceding fronted noun.
• yo.she.Vei ("inhabitants of", H3427) — qal participle in construct form, meaning literally "the ones dwelling of," linking directly to pe.La.shet ("Philistia").

What the text says

The verse is built as two balanced clauses. In the first, sha.me.'U ("they have heard") is a completed perfect action, while yir.ga.Zu ("they tremble") is an imperfect verb carrying the paragogic nun, which does not change the basic meaning but adds a marked, emphatic tone to the trembling that follows the hearing. The subject 'a.Mim ("peoples") is unspecified — no particular nation is named, only "peoples" in general.

The second clause reverses the normal Hebrew verb-subject order: instead of "it seized, anguish," the text places chil ("anguish") first, before the verb 'a.Chaz ("it has seized"). This fronting highlights the anguish itself as the grammatical and thematic focus of the clause. The agent affected is specified through the construct participle yo.she.Vei ("inhabitants of"), which grammatically binds the general condition of anguish to a specific group: the dwellers of pe.La.shet ("Philistia"), a named place rather than a general term.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yir.ga.Zu ("they tremble") as ὠργίσθησαν ("were angered"), a different semantic field from the Hebrew verb of trembling/quaking. The Vulgate follows this same direction with "irati sunt" ("were angered"), and additionally translates the opening verb not as "heard" but as "ascenderunt" ("went up/ascended"), diverging from the Hebrew sha.me.'U ("they have heard"). For the second clause, the LXX renders chil ("anguish") as ὠδῖνες, specifically "birth-pangs," a narrower image than the Hebrew term, and the Vulgate's "dolores" ("pains") follows this same narrower sense. The modern translations given (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) align with the Hebrew's "heard...tremble...anguish" rather than with the LXX/Vulgate's "angered...pains" readings.