Exodus 32:16

Summary

Exodus 32:16 describes the tablets brought down by Moses using two parallel nominal clauses: the tablets are identified as the "work of God," and the writing on them as the "writing of God," specifying that this writing was engraved directly onto the tablets.

Key words

• lu.Chot ("tablets", H3871) — feminine plural with definite article, repeated three times (positions 3, 16, and implied), framing the verse structurally.
• ma.'a.Seh ("work of", H4639G) — construct singular, syntactically bound to 'Elohim, forming the phrase "work of God."
• 'Elohim ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun used twice (positions 5, 11) with singular referent, governing both construct phrases.
• He.mah ("they", H1992) and Hu' ("it", H1931) — third person independent pronouns (positions 6, 12) that resume the fronted noun phrases, a feature called casus pendens.
• cha.Rut ("engraved", H2801) — qal passive participle, masculine singular, describing the state of the writing rather than an action in progress.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two matching syntactic units, each fronting a definite noun (ha.lu.Chot, "the tablets"; ha.mikh.Tav, "the writing") before a construct phrase ("work of God" / "writing of God"), and each closing with an independent pronoun (hemah, hu') that grammatically resumes the initial noun. This is casus pendens: the topic is stated first, then commented upon, with the pronoun functioning as a copula-like link ("the tablets — work of God — they [were]"). This construction gives emphasis to the initial noun and creates a rhythmic parallelism between the two clauses that a simple "the tablets were the work of God" does not preserve.

The final element, cha.Rut ("engraved", H2801), is a passive participle, meaning it describes the writing as being in an already-engraved state upon the tablets, not narrating an engraving action. The preposition 'al ("on", H5921A) attaches this state directly to ha.lu.Chot ("the tablets", H3871), closing the verse by returning to the same word that opened it.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete text) renders the first clause with a plural verb, ἦσαν ("were"), corresponding to the pronoun hemah, but for the second clause the text shows γραφὴ θεοῦ κε κεκολαμμένη — the sequence "κε" appears as a truncated or duplicated element in this source, making the parallel structure with the first clause less clear than in the Hebrew's two matching pronoun-clauses. The Vulgate compresses the verse into two shorter statements ("et factas opere Dei: scriptura quoque Dei erat sculpta in tabulis"), using "sculpta" for cha.Rut, but does not represent the resumptive pronouns hemah and hu' as distinct grammatical elements, merging the topic-comment structure into a more continuous narrative style.