Exodus 32:20

וַיִּקַּח אֶת־הָעֵגֶל אֲשֶׁר עָשׂוּ וַיִּשְׂרֹף בָּאֵשׁ וַיִּטְחַן עַד אֲשֶׁר־דָּק וַיִּזֶר עַל־פְּנֵי הַמַּיִם וַיַּשְׁקְ אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וַיִּקַּ֞ח אֶת־הָעֵ֨גֶל אֲשֶׁ֤ר עָשׂוּ֙ וַיִּשְׂרֹ֣ף בָּאֵ֔שׁ וַיִּטְחַ֖ן עַ֣ד אֲשֶׁר־דָּ֑ק וַיִּ֙זֶר֙ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הַמַּ֔יִם וַיַּ֖שְׁקְ אֶת־בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

Greek (Septuagint)

καὶ λαβὼν τὸν μόσχον ὃν ἐποίησαν κατέκαυσεν αὐτὸν ἐν πυρί, καὶ κατήλεσεν αὐτὸν λεπτόν, καὶ ἔσπειρεν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τὸ ὔδωρ, καὶ ἐποτισεν αὐτὸ τοὺς νἱοὺς Ἰσραήλ.

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

arripiensque vitulum quem fecerant, combussit, et contrivit usque ad pulverem, quem sparsit in aquam, et dedit ex eo potum filiis Israël.

Spanish

Agarró el becerro que habían hecho, lo tiró al fuego y lo molió hasta hacerlo polvo; luego esparció el polvo sobre el agua y obligó a los israelitas a bebérsela.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Y tomó el becerro que habían hecho, y quemólo en el fuego, y moliólo hasta reducirlo á polvo, que esparció sobre las aguas, y diólo á beber á los hijos de Israel.

English

Then he took the calf they had made, burned it in the fire, ground it to powder, and scattered the powder over the face of the water. Then he forced the Israelites to drink it.

✦ What the text says

Summary

The verse narrates five successive actions Moses performs against the golden calf: he takes it, burns it, grinds it, scatters the resulting powder, and makes the Israelites drink it in water. The Hebrew presents these as a rapid chain of completed narrative actions using the vav-consecutive construction.

Key words

'Egel ("calf", H5695) — masculine singular noun, definite via the preceding article ha, referring back to the object already introduced in the narrative.
Dak ("it was fine", H1854) — qal perfect, marking the endpoint of the grinding action introduced by 'asher ("that/until that"), describing the resulting state of fineness.
pe.Nei ("surface of", H6440J) — masculine plural construct form of "face," here used idiomatically to mean the top or surface of a liquid.
Yashk ("he made drink", H8248H) — hiphil (causative) narrative verb: the basic sense "to drink" is turned causative, meaning Moses causes another party (the Israelites) to drink.
va ("and", H9001) — the narrative vav prefixed to each main verb, chaining all five actions as one continuous sequence of events ("and then... and then...").

What the text says

The verse is built entirely on five vav-consecutive qal (and one hiphil) verbs, all with an unstated third-person masculine singular subject (Moses, established earlier in the chapter). This chain — laqach ("took"), saraf ("burned"), tachan ("ground"), zarah ("scattered"), hishqah ("made drink") — presents the destruction of the calf as one uninterrupted sequence of deliberate actions rather than isolated events.

The clause 'ad 'asher daq ("until that it was fine") uses the relative particle 'asher (H0834A) with the preposition 'ad (H5704) to mark a result clause: grinding continues until the state of fineness (daq) is reached. The phrase 'al-penei ha-mayim ("upon the surface of the water") places the scattered powder specifically on top of the water, using the construct noun penei (H6440J) in its common idiomatic sense of "surface" rather than literally "face."

The final verb, yashq (H8248H), is hiphil, grammatically encoding causation: the sense is not simply "the Israelites drank" but "he caused the Israelites to drink." The Hebrew verb itself does not specify manner (force, compulsion, or otherwise) — only that Moses was the causal agent of their drinking.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew states the powder was scattered 'al-penei ha-mayim, "upon the surface of the water." The LXX renders this ὑπὸ τὸ ὔδωρ, "under the water," while the Vulgate has sparsit in aquam, "scattered into the water" — both differ from the Hebrew's surface-oriented phrasing. The BSB translation adds "forced" ("forced the Israelites to drink"), an interpretive gloss on the hiphil yashq, which in the Hebrew data given indicates causation but does not itself specify force.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.