| 6. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with the comparative prepositional clause kemaritam {כְּמַרְעִיתָם | kə-mar-ʿî-tām} ‘as their pasture’, establishing a setting of abundance. It is followed by a vav-consecutive chain of wayyiqtol verbs: vayyishbau {וַיִּשְׂבָּעוּ | way-yiš-ba-ʿû} ‘and they were satisfied’ and sabu {שָׂבְעוּ | śa-ḇaʿ} ‘they were filled’, conveying cumulative fullness. The next wayyiqtol verb vayyaram {וַיָּרָם | way-yā-rām} ‘and was lifted up’ takes libbam {לִבָּם | li-bām} ‘their heart’ as its subject in a Hebrew idiom for pride. The causal preposition al-ken {עַל־כֵּן | ʿal-kēn} ‘therefore’ introduces the outcome, completed by the Qal perfect verb shekhechuni {שְׁכֵחוּנִי | šə-khe-ḥū-nī} ‘they forgot Me’, marked by the first person suffix. This sequence preserves Hebrew narrative logic—abundance leads to pride, which results in forgetting Me—while the English past-tense rendering maintains chronological flow. The idiom “heart lifted up” is rendered passively in the formal version and as an active rising of pride in the dynamic. |