Deuteronomy 5:27

Summary

The people of Israel instruct Moses to approach Yehovah alone, listen to whatever he says, and then relay it to them. They commit themselves in advance to hear and to act on whatever Yehovah communicates to Moses.

Key words

• ke.Rav ("draw near", H7126G) — qal imperative, a direct command singular to Moses to approach.
• sha.Ma' ("hear", H8085G) — qal imperative, paired with the first command; establishes Moses' role as receiver of speech.
• yo.Mar ("he will say", H0559) — qal imperfect, marks the relative clause as referring to future/ongoing divine speech, not a single past utterance.
• te.da.Ber ("you will speak", H1696G) — piel imperfect, an intensive stem describing Moses' future task of transmitting the words.
• sha.Ma'.nu ("we will listen", H8085G) and 'a.Si.nu ("we will do [it]", H6213A) — qal sequential perfects, chaining the people's response as a consequence of the preceding action.

What the text says

The verse opens with two qal imperatives directed at Moses — ke.Rav ("draw near", H7126G) and sha.Ma' ("hear", H8085G) — joined by the conjunction u ("and", H9002). These commands are followed by a relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("that", H0834A) governing the imperfect verb yo.Mar ("he will say", H0559), whose subject is Yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068G) in construct with 'e.lo.Hei ("God", H0430G) plus the suffix nu ("our", H9025), producing "Yehovah our God." The imperfect aspect frames the divine speech as recurring or future rather than a single completed act.

The sentence then shifts with the conjunction ve ("and", H9002) and the pronoun 'At ("you", H0859C) — note this form lacks the final he found in 'a.Tah (H0859A) at the start of the verse, an orthographic variant for the same second-person masculine singular pronoun. This introduces Moses' counter-task, expressed with the piel imperfect te.da.Ber ("you will speak", H1696G), an intensive stem emphasizing sustained or emphatic speech, followed by 'e.Lei.nu ("to us", H0413 + H9035). A second relative clause parallels the first, again using 'a.Sher with the imperfect ye.da.Ber ("he will speak", H1696G), and again naming Yah.weh 'e.lo.Hei.nu directed 'e.Lei.kha ("to you", H0413 + H9031), addressed to Moses.

The final two verbs, ve.sha.Ma'.nu ("we will listen", H8085G) and ve.'a.Si.nu ("we will do [it]", H6213A), are qal sequential perfects (vav-consecutive), a construction that presents the people's listening and doing as the resulting, sequential outcome of the preceding transmission process — Moses hears, Moses speaks, the people hear and act.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'e.lo.Hei.nu with the article, ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν ("the God of us"), matching the construct sense. The Vulgate reorders the clauses, placing "loquerisque ad nos" ("and you shall speak to us") after the divine-speech clause rather than preserving the Hebrew's parallel structure of two matching relative clauses. The BSB translates te.da.Ber as "can tell," introducing a permissive nuance not explicit in the piel imperfect of the Hebrew, which simply marks future/ongoing action.