Exodus 32:14

Summary

The verse reports that Yehovah (H3068G) nikham ("relented", H5162H) concerning the ra'ah ("harm/evil", H7451C) that he had dibber ("spoken", H1696G) to do to his people. It is the narrator's summary statement closing the episode of the intercession over the golden calf, stating a change in the announced outcome for the people.

Key words

• va-yinnachem ("and he relented", H5162H) — niphal verb, chained with the narrative vav; the niphal stem here carries a reflexive/passive nuance, so the verbal form itself indicates that Yehovah underwent a change of disposition, rather than that an external agent changed him.
• ra'ah ("harm", H7451C) — feminine singular noun with the definite article ha- (H9009), "the harm/evil," referring back to a specific, previously mentioned threatened action, not evil in a general sense.
• asher ("which", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause that specifies what the ra'ah consisted of: "which he had spoken to do."
• dibber ("he had spoken", H1696G) — piel perfect, intensive stem, perfect aspect marking completed prior speech; it points back to an earlier verbal declaration of intent.
• la'asot ("to do", H6213A) — qal infinitive with prefixed le- ("to"), expressing purpose/result of the speaking: what was spoken was spoken "in order to do."
• le-'am-o ("to his people", H5971A + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix "his," identifying the intended recipient of the harm as Yehovah's own people.

What the text says

The clause is built around the niphal verb yinnachem (H5162H), which grammatically encodes the subject, Yehovah, as the one affected by the change rather than as an agent acting on someone else — the form is reflexive/passive in stem, even though the semantic content is a shift in intended action. This verb governs the preposition 'al ("on/concerning", H5921A), which introduces the object of the relenting: "the ra'ah." The noun ra'ah is definite (ha-ra'ah), anchoring it to a specific prior reference rather than "evil" as an abstract category.

The relative clause asher dibber la'asot le-'ammo ("which he had spoken to do to his people") supplies the content of that ra'ah. The piel perfect dibber denotes a completed act of speech that occurred before the moment of yinnachem, and the infinitive la'asot expresses the purpose of that speech — the ra'ah was something spoken about with a view to being carried out. The final phrase le-'ammo ("to his people," construct + suffix) identifies the target of the threatened action as belonging to Yehovah himself ("his people"), a possessive marker built into the noun phrase itself.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the verb with hilasthē ("was propitiated/became merciful") where the Hebrew has yinnachem ("relented," niphal of H5162H), and the LXX omits an explicit equivalent for ha-ra'ah ("the harm") and asher dibber ("which he had spoken"), moving directly to peripoiēsai ton laon autou ("to preserve his people"). The Vulgate uses placatus est ("was appeased") for yinnachem, and adds ne faceret ("so that he would not do") to render the purpose sense of la'asot, plus adversus populum suum ("against his people") for le-'ammo, making explicit an adversarial nuance not marked by a preposition in the Hebrew le- ("to").