Exodus 33:5

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to tell the Israelites that they are a "stiff-necked" people, and that if he were to go up among them even briefly, he would destroy them. He then commands them to remove their ornaments so that he can decide what to do with them.

Key words

• qesheh ("stiff of", H7186) — construct adjective joined to oref ("neck", H6203); together the phrase describes a fixed quality of the people, not a single action.
• rega' echad ("a moment... one", H7281/H0259) — a noun plus cardinal number marking a very brief span of time, setting up the conditional danger that follows.
• e'eleh ("I will go up", H5927) — qal imperfect, first person; imperfect verbs express incomplete or potential action, allowing this to read as a real or hypothetical future ("I would go up").
• khiliticha ("I will make an end of you", H3615) — piel (intensive stem) with sequential perfect form, continuing the verbal chain begun by e'eleh; the piel stem intensifies the root idea of "finishing/completing."
• 'ede'ah ("let me consider", H3045) — a form of yada' ("to know"), here functioning within the sequence following the imperative hored ("take down", H3381), tied to the purpose of the command to remove ornaments.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), continuing the story sequence, followed by the divine name Yehovah (H3068G) as subject. The structure is layered speech: Yehovah speaks to Moses (el-Mosheh, H4872), instructing him with the imperative emor ("say", H0559) to relay a message to bene Yisra'el ("the people of Israel", H1121G/H3478). Within that relayed speech, the pronoun 'atem ("you", H0859D) plus the construct phrase 'am qesheh-'oref ("a people stiff of neck") functions as a nominal clause describing a characteristic, not a single event.

The clause with rega' echad ("one moment") and the imperfect e'eleh ("I will go up") linked by the sequential perfect khiliticha ("I will make an end of you") presents two connected actions: an ascent "in your midst" (be-qirbekha, H7130G, construct + suffix) followed by destruction. The imperative hored ("take down", H3381, hiphil causative) commands removal of 'edyekha ("your ornament", H5716, construct + suffix) "from upon you" (me-'aleikha), followed by the form 'ede'ah ("let me consider/know"), which the data marks as an infinitive form tied to the purpose of the preceding command, leading to the interrogative clause mah 'e'eseh lakh ("what will I do to you").

Differences between versions

The Hebrew and Vulgate preserve the embedded structure — Yehovah tells Moses to speak to Israel — while the LXX renders it as Yehovah speaking directly "to the sons of Israel," omitting the intermediate command to Moses to relay the message. Where the Hebrew and Vulgate state that Yehovah would "go up in your midst" (e'eleh be-qirbekha / "ascendam in medio tui") and "make an end of you" (khiliticha / "delebo te"), the LXX instead speaks of the possibility that he "bring another plague" (πληγὴν ἄλλην ἐπάξω) and "consume" them, introducing plague-language absent from the Hebrew wording. The LXX also expands 'edyekha ("your ornament", singular construct) into two items, "the robes of your glories and the ornament" (τὰς στολὰς τῶν δοξῶν ὑμῶν καὶ τὸν κόσμον), where the Hebrew and Vulgate ("ornatum tuum") have a single term.