Exodus 32:33

Summary

Yehovah answers Moses with a construction combining an interrogative and a relative particle, functionally meaning "whoever has sinned against me." The verb for sinning is in the perfect (a completed act), while the verb for erasing is in the imperfect (a future or contingent act), and the object erased is grammatically singular ("him") from "my book."

Key words

• mi ("who?", H4310) — interrogative pronoun opening the clause, not a statement but a question form.
• 'asher ("who/that", H0834A) — relative particle immediately following mi; together mi 'asher creates a rhetorical "whoever" construction rather than a direct accusation.
• chata ("he has sinned", H2398) — qal perfect, third person masculine singular, marking the sin as a completed action already accomplished.
• 'emchenu ("I will wipe out", H4229A) — qal imperfect, first person, with a third-masculine-singular suffix "him," marking the erasing as future or not-yet-completed, contingent on the prior perfect action.
• sifri ("my book", H5612H) — construct singular noun with first-person suffix, "book of me," naming the object from which the erasure occurs.

What the text says

The Hebrew clause does not use a simple relative clause like "the one who sinned"; it opens with the interrogative mi ("who?") immediately followed by the relative 'asher ("who/that"). This mi 'asher sequence functions as a rhetorical question-turned-relative, producing the sense "whoever it is who has sinned." The sin itself is expressed with chata in the qal perfect — a completed action — combined with the preposition-plus-suffix li ("to me"), an idiomatic construction meaning "sinned against me" rather than a directly transitive "sinned me."

The consequence is stated with 'emcheNU, a qal imperfect verb carrying a pronominal suffix "him." The imperfect aspect marks the wiping-out as an act tied to future or ongoing time, contrasted with the completed perfect of the sinning. The object erased is syntactically singular (-nu "him," not a plural suffix), and the location "from my book" uses sifri, a construct-form noun with a first-person suffix, so the book is explicitly marked as belonging to the speaker, Yehovah.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the clause as a conditional, Εἴ τις ἡμάρτηκεν ("if anyone has sinned"), using a conditional particle plus indefinite pronoun rather than the Hebrew's interrogative-relative mi 'asher construction. The LXX also uses the plural ἐξαλείψω αὐτοὺς ("I will wipe them out") where the Hebrew 'emchenu carries a singular suffix "him." The Vulgate's Qui peccaverit... delebo eum preserves the singular object eum ("him"), aligning more closely with the Hebrew's singular suffix, and uses a relative clause with a future verb (peccaverit) rather than the Hebrew's perfect chata.