Exodus 33:10
וְרָאָה כָל־הָעָם אֶת־עַמּוּד הֶֽעָנָן עֹמֵד פֶּתַח הָאֹהֶל וְקָם כָּל־הָעָם וְהִֽשְׁתַּחֲוּוּ אִישׁ פֶּתַח אָהֳלֽוֹ׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וְרָאָ֤ה כָל־הָעָם֙ אֶת־עַמּ֣וּד הֶֽעָנָ֔ן עֹמֵ֖ד פֶּ֣תַח הָאֹ֑הֶל וְקָ֤ם כָּל־הָעָם֙ וְהִֽשְׁתַּחֲוּ֔וּ אִ֖ישׁ פֶּ֥תַח אָהֳלֽוֹ׃
καὶ ἑώρα πᾶς ὁ λαὸς τὸν στύλον τῆς νεφέλης ἑστῶτα ἐπὶ τῆς θύρας τῆς σκηνῆς· καὶ στάντες πᾶς ὁ λαὸς προσεκύνησαν ἕκαστος ἀπὸ τῆς θύρας τῆς σκηνῆς αὐτοῦ.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
cernentibus universis quod columna nubis staret ad ostium tabernaculi. Stabantque ipsi, et adorabant per fores tabernaculorum suorum.
Al ver la columna de nube detenida a la entrada de la Carpa, todo el pueblo se ponía de pie y adoraba a Dios, cada uno a la entrada de su propia carpa.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y viendo todo el pueblo la columna de la nube, que estaba á la puerta del tabernáculo, levantábase todo el pueblo, cada uno á la puerta de su tienda, y adoraba.
When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they would stand up and worship, each one at the entrance to his own tent.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse describes a recurring scene: whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, they would rise and bow down, each person at the entrance of his own tent. The Hebrew presents this as a chain of sequential actions built from three main verbs.
Key words
- ra'ah ("it saw", H7200) — qal sequential perfect, 3rd masculine singular, agreeing with the collective singular subject kol ha'am ("all the people").
- 'omud ("pillar of", H5982) — masculine singular construct, linking directly to he'anan ("the cloud").
- 'omed ("standing", H5975) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the ongoing position of the pillar rather than a single completed action.
- qam ("it arose", H6965) — qal sequential perfect, 3ms, continuing the narrative chain after ra'ah.
- hishtachavu ("they bowed down", H7812) — hishtaphel sequential perfect, 3rd person plural, shifting from the singular verb forms used for kol ha'am to a plural form for the same collective group.
What the text says
The sentence is built as a sequence of three sequential-perfect verbs — ra'ah ("saw"), qam ("arose"), hishtachavu ("bowed down") — each introduced by the narrative vav (H9001), which in Biblical Hebrew narrative typically links successive events. Here the chain describes not a single episode but a repeated pattern, a nuance that surfaces in some translations through words like "would" (BSB) even though the Hebrew verb forms themselves are the same forms used for ordinary sequential narration.
A notable grammatical feature is the shift in verb agreement with kol ha'am ("all the people", H3605 + H5971A). The first two verbs, ra'ah and qam, are 3rd masculine singular, matching the grammatically singular collective noun. The third verb, hishtachavu, switches to plural, and the sentence adds the distributive term 'ish ("each/every one", H0376), followed by petach 'oholo ("the opening of his tent", H6607 + H0168 + H9023) — showing that although the people act as a unit in seeing and rising, the bowing is described distributively, each person at his own tent-entrance.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders ra'ah with the imperfect ἑώρα ("was seeing"), an aspect emphasizing ongoing or repeated viewing, whereas the Hebrew uses a sequential perfect form. The Vulgate similarly uses imperfect verbs, "stabant" and "adorabant" ("they were standing," "they were worshiping"), reinforcing a habitual reading not explicitly marked by tense in the Hebrew verb forms themselves. The Vulgate's opening "cernentibus universis" (an ablative construction, "with all perceiving") restructures the Hebrew's verb-first clause into a subordinate participial phrase.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.