Exodus 34:10

Summary

Yehovah announces to Moses that he is establishing a covenant, marked by wonders never before performed in any nation, so that the surrounding people will witness "the work of Yehovah" through the acts done with him.

Key words

• koRet ("about to make", H3772H) — qal participle of "cut," used idiomatically with berit to mean making a covenant; the participle form indicates an act in progress or imminent, not a completed one.
• berit ("a covenant", H1285) — feminine singular noun, the direct object of the "cutting" action, naming the pact itself.
• nifla'ot ("wonders", H6381) — niphal participle, feminine plural; the niphal (passive-reflexive) stem casts these acts as things that "show themselves as extraordinary," rather than actions someone performs on them directly.
• nivre'u ("they have been created", H1254A) — niphal perfect, third person plural, from the same root as bara used in Genesis 1; here it stresses that such wonders have never come into being anywhere on earth.
• nora' ("awesome", H3372H) — niphal participle, masculine singular, describing "the work of Yehovah" (ma'aseh Yehovah) as something that inspires fear/awe by its nature.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative va ("and", H9001) plus yomer ("he said", H0559), continuing the storyline of divine speech. The interjection hinneh ("here!", H2009) followed by the independent pronoun anokhi ("I", H0595) and the participle koret ("about to make", H3772H) creates a construction typical of solemn declarations: "Behold, I am one who cuts a covenant" — the participle presents the action as currently unfolding rather than a simple future statement. This covenant is set neged kol-ammekha ("before all your people", H5048/H3605/H5971A), a construct chain marking the audience before whom the act takes place.

The wonders (nifla'ot, H6381) are qualified by a relative clause using asher lo' ("which not", H0834A/H3808) plus the niphal perfect nivre'u ("they have been created", H1254A) — grammatically stating that nothing like them has previously come into existence bekhol-ha'aretz ("in all the earth", H0776G) or bekhol-hagoyim ("among all the nations", H1471A). The sequential perfect ra'ah ("it will see", H7200G) continues the narrative chain, indicating a resulting future event: the people who witness these acts will see et-ma'aseh Yehovah ("the work of Yehovah", H3068G), marked by the direct object particle et (H0853). The final clause explains this work through the niphal participle nora' ("awesome", H3372H), attached to the demonstrative hu' ("it", H1931), and closes with another participle, oseh ("about to do", H6213A), paired with the preposition-suffix immakh ("with you", H5973A/H9031), locating the action as something done in direct relation to the addressee.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders nifla'ot ("wonders", H6381) as endoxa ("glorious things"), a different semantic emphasis than the Hebrew's stress on their unprecedented origin. Where the Hebrew has nivre'u ("they have been created", H1254A), the LXX uses gegonen ("have happened/come to be"), a more generic verb of occurrence rather than one echoing the creation vocabulary of bara. The Vulgate adds terribile ("terrible") explicitly attached to opus Domini ("the work of the Lord"), matching the Hebrew's nora' ("awesome", H3372H) but rendering it with a term carrying stronger connotations of dread than the English "awesome" typically conveys.