As when the earth is parted
and split. Here it is the grammar that is baffling because both Hebrew
verbs are active and transitive, with no grammatical subject in sight. Rashi
proposes an elided “tree” as the subject of the parting and splitting, though
the imagery looks more like an earthquake. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible,
3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:322)
