Exodus 16:10

Summary

The verse narrates that while Aaron was speaking to the whole community of Israel, they turned toward the wilderness, and at that moment the glory of Yehovah appeared in the cloud. The sentence is built as a temporal clause followed by two narrative actions.

Key words

• va-yeHi ("and it was", H1961) — narrative qal verb marking the opening of a new episode, the standard "and it came to pass" formula.
• keDaBer ("when he spoke", H1696G) — piel infinitive construct with the intensive stem, indicating a sustained or emphatic act of speaking (not a single word but ongoing address).
• edat ("congregation of", H5712) — feminine singular construct, linking directly to "sons of Israel" to form "congregation of the sons of Israel."
• yifNu ("they turned", H6437G) — qal narrative verb, third person plural, showing a collective physical turning of the people.
• nirAh ("it appeared", H7200G) — niphal perfect of the root "to see," meaning literally "it was seen/made visible"; the passive-reflexive form frames the glory as something that became visible rather than an agent acting.

What the text says

The verse opens with the formulaic va-yeHi ("and it was", H1961), which in Biblical Hebrew narrative introduces a temporal clause governed by ke- ("when", H9004) plus the infinitive daBer ("to speak", H1696G). This construction — "and it was, when Aaron spoke" — sets up a background action (Aaron's speaking) against which the main narrative events unfold. The piel stem of daBer suggests an intensive or repeated act of communication, appropriate to addressing "all the congregation of the sons of Israel" (kol-adat bene-Yisra'el), a chain of construct nouns (H3605, H5712, H1121G) that builds a single compound expression for the entire assembled people.

Two consecutive narrative verbs follow, both introduced by the vav-consecutive: yifNu ("they turned", H6437G) and, after the interjection hiNeh ("there!", H2009), the niphal nirAh ("it appeared", H7200G). The niphal form is significant: rather than saying Yehovah's glory "showed itself" actively, the grammar presents the glory as the object that "was seen" — the verb centers on the perceptual event as experienced by the people who had just turned toward the wilderness. The interjection hiNeh marks a shift into the immediate, vivid present of the observers, a common device for signaling sudden visual perception within past narrative.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders keDaBer ("when he spoke") with ἡνίκα ἐλάλει, a temporal clause using an imperfect verb, which conveys ongoing action similarly to the Hebrew piel infinitive. The Vulgate's cumque loqueretur likewise uses an imperfect subjunctive, preserving the durative sense. All three traditions agree structurally on the sequence: speaking, turning, and the appearance of the glory, without notable divergence in content beyond these expected shifts in verbal aspect across languages.