Exodus 34:9

Summary

Moses asks that if he has found favor in God's sight, God ("Adonai") should go in the midst of the people despite their obstinacy, and asks for forgiveness of their iniquity and sin, and to be taken as a possession. The verse is built as a chain of petitions following a conditional opening.

Key words

• 'im ("if", H0518A) — introduces the conditional clause on which the whole request rests; paired later with ki ("for", H3588A), which shifts to a causal/concessive clause about the people's nature.
• chen ("favor", H2580) — masculine singular noun, object of matzati ("I have found", H4672), a perfect verb marking completed action as the basis for the plea.
• qesheh-'oref ("stiff of neck", H7186/H6203) — adjective in construct with "neck," forming a fixed description of the people; the construct chain packs a descriptive judgment into two words.
• salachta ("you will forgive", H5545) — sequential (waw-consecutive) perfect; grammatically it continues the force of the preceding jussive yelekh ("let him go", H1980G) as part of one connected request.
• nechaltanu ("you will take as a possession", H5157) — final verb in the sequential-perfect chain, closing the series of requests begun with yelekh.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative va ("and", H9001) attached to yomer ("he said", H0559), introducing direct speech. The conditional 'im ("if", H0518A) governs matzati chen be'eineikha ("I have found favor in your eyes"), a completed-action perfect verb giving the ground for the request that follows. The address Adonai (H0136) appears twice: first as a vocative ("in your eyes, Adonai"), then again before the jussive verb yelekh ("let him go", H1980G) — but here Adonai is treated as a third-person subject of the jussive rather than continuing in second person. This produces a shift from direct address to third-person reference to the same addressee within a single unbroken request, a feature the English glosses do not show explicitly.

The ki ("for", H3588A) clause states the people's nature using a construct chain, 'am qesheh-'oref hu ("a people stiff of neck [is] it"), placing the descriptive adjective-noun construct before the resumptive pronoun hu ("it", H1931). After this, the narrative continues with two sequential perfects, salachta ("you will forgive", H5545) and nechaltanu ("you will take us as a possession", H5157), each governing a construct noun with a first-person plural suffix ('avonenu, "our iniquity"; chatatenu, "our sin"). The sequential-perfect form here continues the request-force of the earlier jussive yelekh, so grammatically the whole verse functions as one linked petition: "let him go... and forgive... and take us."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first Adonai as σου ("your," in "ἐνώπιόν σου"), absorbing it into a second-person pronoun rather than a separate vocative title, and translates the second Adonai as ὁ κύριός μου ("my lord"), keeping a title only at the second occurrence. The Vulgate places "Domine" once, after the first clause, and renders the jussive yelekh ("let him go", H1980G) as gradiaris ("you go"), a second-person form, where the Hebrew has a third-person jussive despite addressing God directly.