Exodus 32:6

Summary

The verse narrates a sequence of actions performed by the people "the next day": rising early, offering burnt offerings and peace offerings, then sitting to eat and drink, and finally rising up for an activity described by the verb tzachek ("to play/laugh", H6711). The Hebrew presents this as a chain of consecutive narrative actions.

Key words

• va-yash-Kimu ("they rose early", H7925) — hiphil narrative form, causative stem, marking the first link in the narrative chain ("and then they rose early").
• 'olot ("burnt offerings", H5930A) — feminine plural noun, the object of the verb ya'alu ("they offered up").
• shelamim ("peace offerings", H8002) — masculine plural noun, a distinct category of sacrifice from the 'olot.
• sha-To ("to drink", H8354) — qal absolute infinitive; this form intensifies or reinforces the preceding action rather than simply reporting a new one.
• tzachek ("play", H6711) — piel infinitive, an intensive stem of the root, governed by the preposition le ("to", H9005), expressing the purpose of the people's rising.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of five narrative-vav constructions (vayyiqtol forms), each marked by the prefix va ("and", H9001) attached to a verb: they rose early, they offered up, they brought near, it/he sat, they arose. This grammatical pattern presents the events as sequential and tightly linked, one action following directly from the previous one, typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative prose.

The verbs governing eating and drinking use infinitive constructions with the preposition le ("to", H9005): le'ekhol ("to eat", H0398) and, for drinking, the absolute infinitive shaTo ("to drink", H8354). The use of the absolute infinitive here, rather than a matching construct infinitive parallel to le'ekhol, is a grammatical feature that intensifies or underscores the act of drinking without altering its basic verbal function within the clause governed by yeshev ("it/he sat down", H3427). The final clause repeats the le-infinitive pattern with le-tzachek ("to play", H6711), where the verb is in the piel stem, an intensive binyan, describing the purpose for which the people rose after eating and drinking.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew sha-To is an absolute infinitive intensifying "to drink," a nuance not distinctly rendered in the LXX (πιεῖν, a plain infinitive) or the Vulgate (bibere, a plain infinitive); both simply parallel "to eat" and "to drink" without markers of intensification. The SBLIBRE Spanish version renders the final verb le-tzachek as "para divertirse y hacer un desastre" ("to have fun and cause a mess"), an expanded rendering compared to the single Hebrew infinitive tzachek, the LXX's παίζειν ("to play"), and the Vulgate's ludere ("to play"), which the BSB and RV1909 render more directly as "revelry" and "regocijarse" ("to rejoice"), respectively.