Exodus 10:8

Summary

Moses and Aaron are brought back before Pharaoh, who tells them to go and serve Yehovah their God, then immediately asks a pointed question: exactly who will be going. The verse moves from narrative action to direct speech, ending in an unresolved interrogative.

Key words

• yushav ("he was brought back", H7725G) — hophal (causative-passive) form: the subject (Moses and Aaron) does not act but is made to return by an unnamed agent; the verb has no explicit human subject in the clause.
• lekhu ("go", H1980G) and 'ivdu ("serve", H5647H) — both qal imperatives, masculine plural, giving Pharaoh's command a double-verb structure: first permission to depart, then the purpose of that departure.
• mi ("who?", H4310), repeated as mi ("who?", H4310) — the doubled interrogative pronoun (mi... va-mi) intensifies the question, asking not simply "who" but implicitly "which ones, specifically."
• ha-holekhim ("the ones going", H1980G) — qal participle, masculine plural, with definite article ha (H9009): grammatically it turns "going" into a substantive class ("the goers"), making Pharaoh's question about the identity/category of travelers rather than a simple future action.

What the text says

The verse opens with two narrative vav-forms (va-yushav, va-yomer), the typical chain of Biblical Hebrew storytelling: "and it happened... and he said." The first verb, yushav, is passive (hophal), so the text states that Moses and Aaron "were brought back" without naming who brought them — the causer of the action is left implicit, a nuance not preserved in translations that supply an active subject.

Pharaoh's speech contains two imperatives in sequence, lekhu and 'ivdu, followed by the object YHWH 'elohei-khem ("Yehovah, God of you-plural" — 'elohei in construct form, H0430G, linked to the suffix -khem, H9026). The command is immediately undercut by the interrogative clause mi va-mi ha-holekhim, where the doubled mi plus the participial construction ha-holekhim (with article, functioning as "the ones who go") frames the question as one of category or list rather than a simple yes/no about departure.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew yushav is a passive verb with an unstated agent ("he/it was caused to return"). The LXX renders this as apestrepsan ("they brought back"), an active plural verb, and the Vulgate similarly uses the active plural Revocaverunt ("they recalled"), both supplying an explicit plural subject absent from the Hebrew passive construction. Additionally, where the Hebrew names YHWH (H3068G) explicitly as the object of "serve," the LXX substitutes tō theō ("to god"), omitting the divine name found in the Hebrew text.