Exodus 31:18

Summary

The verse narrates that when God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he handed him two stone tablets inscribed with writing. The Hebrew text describes these tablets twice — as luchot ha'edut ("tablets of the testimony") and as luchot 'even ("tablets of stone") — before specifying that the writing was done "by the finger of" a divine agent.

Key words

• yiTen ("he gave", H5414G) — qal narrative verb continuing the story sequence; no explicit subject noun appears in this clause, the agent is carried over from context.
• khaloT ("finished", H3615G) — piel infinitive with 3ms suffix (-o, "his"), forming the temporal clause "when he finished speaking with him."
• luchot ("tablets of", H3871) — feminine plural construct noun, repeated twice in the verse, each time governing a different noun (ha'edut, "the testimony"; 'even, "stone").
• ketuvim ("written", H3789) — qal passive participle, masculine plural, agreeing with luchot ("tablets") and describing their state as already inscribed.
• 'Elohim ("God", H0430G) — noun with masculine plural morphology used here with singular referential force, governing the construct phrase etzba' Elohim ("finger of God").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative verb yiTen ("he gave") followed immediately by the indirect object el-Mosheh ("to Moses"), before the temporal clause ke-khaloto le-dabber ito be-har Sinai ("when he finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai") is inserted. This construction places the giving of the tablets as the main action, with the completion of speech as background information — the object of the giving (the tablets themselves) is delayed until after the temporal clause, creating a suspended sentence structure typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative syntax.

The tablets are described through two parallel construct chains: sheney luchot ha'edut ("two tablets of the testimony") and luchot 'even ("tablets of stone"), followed by the participle ketuvim ("written") modifying "tablets." The final phrase be-'etzba' Elohim ("by the finger of God") uses a construct noun ('etzba', "finger of") governing Elohim, which is morphologically plural but used with singular sense, as is typical for this term when referring to the deity in the Hebrew text.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew clause containing yiTen has no explicit subject noun in this verse; the agent is understood from context. The LXX renders this with ἔδωκεν ("he gave") similarly without a subject noun in the clause. The Vulgate, however, explicitly adds Dominus ("the Lord") as the subject: "Deditque Dominus Moysi." The BSB and SBLIBRE translations also insert explicit subjects ("the LORD," "Yehová") not present as separate lexical items in the Hebrew wording given here.