Exodus 23:24

Summary

Exodus 23:24 prohibits bowing to or serving the gods of other peoples and imitating their religious practices. It commands instead the thorough destruction of their sacred pillars, using emphatic Hebrew verb constructions to stress completeness of the action.

Key words

• tishtachaveh ("you must bow down", H7812) — hithpael imperfect, a reflexive/reciprocal stem often used for acts of prostration or worship; the imperfect marks this as an ongoing prohibition.
• ta'avedem ("you must be enticed to serve", H5647) — hophal imperfect, a causative-passive stem, differing from the plain active "serve" found in the other two verbs of the verse.
• harès teharsem ("completely tear down", H2040) — infinitive absolute followed by the same root in the piel imperfect; this doubling construction intensifies the verbal action, marking total destruction.
• shabber teshabber ("totally shatter", H7665) — same infinitive-absolute-plus-imperfect pattern as above, piel stem, reinforcing the totality of the shattering.
• matzevotehem ("their sacred pillars", H4676) — feminine plural construct noun with 3rd person plural suffix, denoting standing stones associated with cultic worship.

What the text says

The verse is structured as three parallel prohibitions followed by two emphatic commands. The first three clauses each open with the negation lo' ("not", H3808) and a second-person masculine singular imperfect verb: tishtachaveh ("you must bow down"), ta'avedem ("you must be enticed to serve"), and ta'aseh ("you must make", H6213A), each governing a prepositional or comparative phrase referring to "their" gods or works via the pronominal suffix hem (H9028). The verb in the second clause, ta'avedem, is grammatically distinct from the other two: it is hophal, a causative-passive stem, which differs from the straightforward active service implied by "bow down" and "make like."

The final clause, introduced by ki ("for/if", H3588A), shifts from prohibition to positive command using a construction found nowhere else in the verse: the infinitive absolute harès placed before the finite imperfect teharsem (same root, H2040), and again shabber before teshabber (H7665). This infinitive-plus-imperfect pairing is a standard Hebrew device for emphasizing certainty or completeness of an action — here rendered in English translations as "completely" or "totally" tear down and shatter. The object of these verbs is matzevotehem ("their sacred pillars", H4676), plural construct with the third-person plural suffix, referring to standing stone objects tied to worship.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the hophal ta'avedem as λατρεύσῃς ("you should serve"), an active form, without reflecting the passive-causative nuance of the Hebrew hophal stem. The Vulgate's coles eos ("you shall worship them") similarly gives an active sense. For the emphatic infinitive-imperfect pairs, the LXX preserves a similar doubling with καθαιρέσει καθελεῖς and συντρίβων συντρίψεις, while the Vulgate simplifies to single verbs, destrues and confringes, without doubling the root to mark intensity as the Hebrew does.