Exodus 32:10

Summary

Exodus 32:10 records divine speech in which God instructs Moses to leave him alone so that his anger may act against the people, resulting in their destruction, followed by a promise to make Moses into a great nation instead.

Key words

• ha.Nicha ("leave alone", H5117) — hiphil imperative with paragogic he, a causative command form intensified by the emphatic ending, addressed to Moses.
• yichar ("may it burn", H2734) — qal jussive, expressing a wish or permission for the anger to act, third person "he/it".
• 'aPi ("my anger", H0639G) — masculine singular noun in construct state with the first-person suffix -i ("my"), literally "my nostril/anger", the grammatical subject of the jussive verb.
• 'a.kha.Le ("I may make an end of them", H3615H) — piel imperfect with prefixed vav, intensive stem denoting completion/consumption, marking result or purpose following the previous clause, first person "I".
• 'e.'e.Seh ("I may make", H6213H) — qal imperfect with prefixed vav, continuing the sequence of purpose clauses, first person "I", governing the object "you" (Moses) toward becoming a "nation".

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of linked clauses connected by the conjunction ve ("and"), each carrying a verb in a modal form (imperative, jussive, or imperfect with vav) rather than simple indicative statements. This chain structure creates a sequence: first the imperative haNicha ("leave alone") with the emphatic paragogic he ending, then the jussive yichar ("may it burn") describing the anger's action, followed by two verbs in the imperfect-with-vav construction ('achaLem and 'e'eSeh) that express continuation or purpose — "so that I may make an end" and "so that I may make you."

The noun 'aPi ("my anger", H0639G) functions grammatically as the subject of the jussive verb yichar, literally rendering something like "let my nostril/anger burn against them" — the Hebrew idiom for anger uses the body-part noun "nostril" as its lexical base, though this is not visible in the gloss "anger" alone. The direct object marker 'ot- (H0853) before the suffix -kha ("you") in verse 22 marks Moses explicitly as the grammatical object of the verb 'e'eSeh ("I may make"), distinguishing the addressee from the third-person plural "them" (Hem, H9038) who are the object of the destruction clauses.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders haNicha li ("leave alone [to] me") as ἔασόν με ("let/permit me"), a similar sense of releasing constraint. The Vulgate's dimitte me ("dismiss me" / "let me go") parallels this. Where the Hebrew has two separate purpose/result verbs — 'achaLem ("I may make an end of them") and a distinct action described by yichar ("may it burn") — the LXX combines these into θυμωθεὶς ὀργῇ... ἐκτρίψω ("having been enraged... I will utterly destroy"), merging the anger and destruction into a tighter causal sequence not structurally identical to the Hebrew's threefold verbal chain.