Exodus 32:18

Summary

The speaker (Moses, per the narrative context) responds that the sound coming from the camp is neither a kol ("sound") associated with gevurah ("strength") nor one associated with chalushah ("weakness"), but rather a kol of anot — using a grammatically distinct verb form — that he identifies as shomea' ("hearing").

Key words

• kol ("sound of", H6963H) — masculine singular construct, repeated three times; each occurrence introduces a different qualifying infinitive, structuring the verse as a triple comparison.
• anot ("singing of", H6030C) — qal infinitive construct in positions 5 and 10, paired respectively with gevurah ("strength", H1369) and chalushah ("weakness", H2476).
• anot ("singing", H6030C) — piel infinitive construct in position 13, same root as the qal forms above but in the intensive stem, marking a grammatical and semantic shift from the first two occurrences.
• 'ein ("there not", H0369) — construct negative particle, used twice to negate the first two proposed identifications of the sound.
• shomea' ("hearing", H8085G) — qal participle, masculine singular, following the independent pronoun anokhi ("I", H0595); the participle marks ongoing perception rather than a completed act of hearing.

What the text says

The Hebrew builds three parallel clauses, each anchored by the construct noun kol ("sound of") followed by an infinitive of the root anot (H6030). The first two clauses are negated by 'ein ("there is not") and pair the qal infinitive anot with gevurah ("strength") and chalushah ("weakness") respectively — proposing and rejecting two possible identifications of the noise. The third clause drops the negation and shifts the same root anot into the piel (intensive) stem, without pairing it with an abstract noun like the first two. This morphological shift from qal to piel on the identical root is a feature of the Hebrew that a translation using a single word like "singing" for all three instances cannot reproduce; the piel form marks the sound as grammatically and semantically distinct from the two rejected options.

The final clause closes with the independent pronoun anokhi ("I") followed by the participle shomea' ("hearing"), emphasizing the subject's direct, ongoing perception as the basis for the identification.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders kol + anot with φωνὴ ἐξαρχόντων ("voice of those leading/beginning"), introducing a participial construction about people initiating a sound "according to strength" (κατ' ἰσχύν) or "of turning" (τροπῆς), which shifts the Hebrew's abstract nouns gevurah and chalushah into different semantic categories. The Vulgate interprets the first two clauses as clamor adhortantium ad pugnam ("the shout of those exhorting to battle") and vociferatio compellentium ad fugam ("the outcry of those driving to flight"), specifying a battle/flight context not explicit in the Hebrew's more abstract gevurah/chalushah pairing. Both LXX and Vulgate render the final piel-stem anot simply as "singing" (φωνὴν... οἴνου in LXX adds "of wine"; Vulgate vocem cantantium), without marking the qal/piel distinction visible in the Hebrew.