| 7. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with two successive vav-consecutive Qal wayyiqtol verbs, vatigash {וַתִּגְעַשׁ | wa-ttig-ʿaš} ‘and it shook’ and vatirash {וַתִּרְעַשׁ | wa-ttir-ʿaš} ‘and it trembled’, establishing a sudden cosmic disturbance. The noun aretz {אָרֶץ | ʾā-reṣ} ‘the earth’ serves as the subject of these actions. The construct phrase umosdei harim {וּמוֹסְדֵי הָרִים | û-mōs-dê hā-rîm} ‘foundations of the mountains’ extends the scope to the earth’s most stable structures. This is followed by yirgazu {יִרְגָּזוּ | yir-gā-zû} ‘they trembled’ (Qal imperfect) and the Hitpael wayyiqtol vayitgaashu {וַיִּתְגָּעֲשׁוּ | wa-yit-ga-ʿa-šû} ‘and they shook’, forming an intensifying parallelism. The conjunction ki {כִּי־ | kî} ‘because’ introduces the causal clause charah lo {חָרָה לוֹ | ḥā-rā lô} ‘he was angry with him’, where lo marks a dative of interest highlighting the divine emotional response. The shift from Qal to Hitpael verbs heightens the depiction of the earth under divine wrath and is rendered in English as two balanced clauses linked by a semicolon to preserve the Hebrew poetic rhythm. |