Exodus 13:8

Summary

Exodus 13:8 instructs that on a specified day the addressee is to explain to his son the reason behind a ritual action, formulated as a direct-speech explanation: "because of this, Yehovah acted for me when I went out from Egypt." The verse is a speech-act instruction (telling formula) followed by the content of what is to be told.

Key words

• hi.gad.Ta ("you will tell", H5046) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain from the previous verses; the causative stem marks an act of "causing to know/telling," not mere speaking.
• ba.'a.Vur ("for the sake of", H5668) — construct noun governing zeh, forming a compound phrase "for the sake of this," pointing to a preceding referent (the ritual practice just commanded).
• Zeh ("this", H2088) — demonstrative particle; its antecedent lies outside this verse, in the preceding instructions about unleavened bread.
• 'a.Sah ("he did", H6213A) — qal perfect, marking the exodus action as a completed event from the speaker's viewpoint.
• tze.T ("came out", H3318G) with 1st-person suffix — qal infinitive construct, functioning temporally ("in my going out"), governed by the preposition be ("when").

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on hi.gad.Ta, a hiphil sequential perfect that continues a chain of instructions begun earlier; grammatically this marks an obligation ("you shall tell") addressed to a male singular subject, directed le.vin.kha ("to your son"). The temporal phrase ba.yom ha.hu ("on that day") fixes the moment of telling, introduced by the infinitive le.mor ("saying"), which opens direct speech.

The reported speech itself is built around ba.'a.Vur zeh ("for the sake of this"), a construct phrase whose demonstrative zeh points back to an antecedent not contained in this verse — likely the preceding ritual actions (eating unleavened bread) commanded earlier in the chapter. The clause 'a.Sah Yehovah li ("Yehovah did for me") uses the qal perfect to present the exodus as a completed divine act, with the preposition li ("for/to me") marking the beneficiary. The final clause, be.tze.T.i mi.Mitz.rayim ("when I went out from Egypt"), uses an infinitive construct with a first-person suffix governed by be, producing a temporal subordinate clause rather than a finite verb — a construction Hebrew favors for background timing that English and other target languages must render with a full clause ("when I came out").

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the ba'avur zeh clause as "Hoc est quod fecit mihi Dominus" ("This is what the Lord did for me"), making zeh ("this") the grammatical subject of an equative statement rather than preserving the Hebrew's causal construct phrase "for the sake of this." The LXX's Diὰ τοῦτο ("because of this") stays closer to the Hebrew's causal sense of ba'avur zeh. The SBLIBRE Spanish translation adds interpretive material not present in the Hebrew ("Hacemos esto para recordar," "We do this in order to remember"), supplying an explicit purpose clause absent from the Hebrew's more compact construct phrase.