Exodus 34:1

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to carve two new stone tablets to replace the ones he broke, and announces that he himself will write on them the same words that had been on the first tablets.

Key words

• pesol ("cut out", H6458) — qal imperative, second person masculine singular: a direct command to Moses to perform the carving himself.
• lechah rendered through le + kha (H9005/H9031) — preposition with pronominal suffix "for yourself," marking the tablets as something Moses must produce for his own use in the process.
• ka-rishonim (H9004 + H7223G) — preposition "like the" + ordinal "former/first," establishing a comparison: the new tablets are to match the previous ones in form.
• ve-khatavti (H3789) — qal sequential perfect, first person singular: "and I will write," continuing the narrative sequence and assigning the writing action to Yehovah, not Moses.
• shibbarta (H7665) — piel perfect, second person masculine singular: an intensive form of "to break," describing the shattering Moses previously carried out on the first tablets.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative construction va-yomer ("and he said," H0559), typical of Hebrew storytelling, introducing direct speech from Yehovah (H3068G) to Mosheh (H4872). The command itself, pesol-lekha ("cut out for yourself," H6458 + H9031), places the action of carving on Moses using an imperative directly addressed to him, while the phrase shenei-luchot avanim ("two tablets of stone," H8147 + H3871 + H0068G) specifies the object in construct chain form — literally "two of tablets of stone."

The comparison ka-rishonim ("like the former ones," H7223G) links the new tablets to the previous set without repeating the noun "tablets," relying on the ordinal alone. The verb shift from imperative to ve-khatavti ("and I will write," H3789), a sequential perfect, marks a change in subject and grammatical aspect: the carving is Moses' task, but the writing is Yehovah's. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before ha-devarim ("the words," H1697G) signals that "the words" is the object of "write," and the relative clause asher hayu al ha-luchot ha-rishonim ("which were on the first tablets," H0834A + H1961 + H7223G) specifies which words: those originally on the first tablets. The final relative clause, asher shibbarta ("which you shattered," H0834A + H7665), uses the piel stem of shabar, an intensive form, to describe the destructive action Moses performed on those first tablets.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds material not present in the Hebrew: καὶ ἀνάβηθι πρὸς μὲ εἰς τὸ ὄρος ("and go up to me onto the mountain"), an instruction absent from the Hebrew text at this point. The Vulgate's Præcide ("cut off/carve") and scribam ("I will write") follow the Hebrew's division of labor between Moses carving and Yehovah writing, matching the structure of pesol and ve-khatavti, without the LXX's added clause about ascending the mountain.