Exodus 15:25

וַיִּצְעַק אֶל־יְהוָה וַיּוֹרֵהוּ יְהוָה עֵץ וַיַּשְׁלֵךְ אֶל־הַמַּיִם וַֽיִּמְתְּקוּ הַמָּיִם שָׁם שָׂם לוֹ חֹק וּמִשְׁפָּט וְשָׁם נִסָּֽהוּ׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וַיִּצְעַ֣ק אֶל־יְהוָ֗ה וַיּוֹרֵ֤הוּ יְהוָה֙ עֵ֔ץ וַיַּשְׁלֵךְ֙ אֶל־הַמַּ֔יִם וַֽיִּמְתְּק֖וּ הַמָּ֑יִם שָׁ֣ם שָׂ֥ם ל֛וֹ חֹ֥ק וּמִשְׁפָּ֖ט וְשָׁ֥ם נִסָּֽהוּ׃

Greek (Septuagint)

ἐβόησεν πρὸς κύριον· καὶ ἕλιξεν αὐτῷ Κύριος ξύλον, καὶ ἐνέβαλεν αὐτὸ εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ, καὶ ἐγλυκάνθη τὸ ὕδωρ. ἐκεῖ ὤθετο αὐτῷ δικαιώματα καὶ κρίσεις, καὶ ἐκεῖ ἐπείρασεν αὐτὸν

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

At ille clamavit ad Dominum, qui ostendit ei lignum: quod cum misisset in aquas, in dulcedinem versæ sunt: ibi constituit ei præcepta, atque judicia, et ibi tentavit eum,

Spanish

Moisés le pidió ayuda a Yehová, y Yehová le mostró un pedazo de madera; Moisés lo echó al agua, y el agua se volvió dulce. Allí en Mara, Yehová les dio leyes y normas, y allí los puso a prueba.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Y Moisés clamó á Jehová; y Jehová le mostró un árbol, el cual metídolo que hubo dentro de las aguas, las aguas se endulzaron. Allí les dió estatutos y ordenanzas, y allí los probó;

English

And Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log. And when he cast it into the waters, they were sweetened. There the LORD made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He tested them,

✦ What the text says

Summary

The verse narrates a chain of actions: someone cries out to YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068G), who shows him a piece of etz ("tree/wood", H6086I) that sweetens bitter water when thrown in. The text then shifts to note that "there" a chok ("decree", H2706G) and mishpat ("custom", H4941G) were established, and "there" a test occurred.

Key words

va-yitz'aq ("he cried out", H6817) — qal narrative form; the subject is only marked by the verbal ending "he," with no explicit personal name given in the Hebrew clause itself.
va-yorehu ("he showed him", H3384B) — hiphil (causative) form built on the same root family associated with instruction/teaching; here it carries the sense of causing someone to see or perceive something.
etz ("tree", H6086I) — masculine singular noun with no article; it denotes wood/a tree without specifying species or size.
sham ("there", H8033G) — adverb of place, repeated twice in the verse (once before sam "he made" and once before nissahu "he tested him"), creating a parallel structure around the two completed (perfect-tense) actions.
nissahu ("he put him to the test", H5254G) — piel (intensive) perfect form, with the 3rd person masculine singular object suffix hu ("him") attached directly to the verb.

What the text says

The verse moves through four narrative (vayyiqtol) verbs — va-yitz'aq, va-yorehu, va-yashlekh, va-yimteku — describing a sequential chain: crying out, showing, throwing, sweetening. Grammatically, none of these verbs carries an explicit subject noun in the Hebrew provided; the subject is encoded only in the verb's person/gender ending ("he"). The switch to perfect-tense verbs (sam, nissahu) after the adverb sham ("there") marks a shift from sequential narrative action to a summarizing or explanatory statement, a common feature distinguishing narrative flow from commentary in Biblical Hebrew syntax.

The object suffixes are notable: lo ("to/for him", H9033 attached to the preposition) and hu ("him", H9033 attached to nissahu) are both singular, referring back to the same single antecedent established by va-yorehu... hu ("showed him") earlier in the verse.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew etz ("tree", H6086I) is rendered as ξύλον ("wood/log") in the LXX and lignum ("wood") in the Vulgate; BSB follows with "log," while RV1909 and SBLIBRE render it "árbol" ("tree"), reflecting the semantic range of the Hebrew noun rather than a change in the underlying text.

The Hebrew singular suffixes lo and hu ("to him," "him") are rendered as plural "them" in BSB and SBLIBRE ("made for them," "gave them," "puts them to test"), where the Hebrew word-by-word data shows singular forms.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.