Exodus 16:28

Summary

Exodus 16:28 records Yehovah speaking to Moses, posing a rhetorical question about how long the people have refused to keep his commandments and laws. The verse uses a fixed interrogative idiom marking prolonged repeated failure rather than a single incident.

Key words

• 'ad-'anah ("until when", H5704 + H0575) — a two-word interrogative construction expressing exasperation over duration, roughly "how long."
• me'antem ("you have refused", H3985) — piel perfect, 2nd person masculine plural; the piel stem intensifies the sense of refusal, and the perfect aspect frames it as a completed, settled pattern of behavior up to the speaking moment.
• shamor ("to keep", H8104) — qal infinitive, functioning as the object of the refusal: what is being refused is "keeping" the commandments.
• mitzvotai ("my commandments", H4687 + H9020) — feminine plural noun in construct with the 1st person suffix "my," marking Yehovah as the source of the commandments.
• torotai ("my laws", H8451 + H9020) — feminine plural noun with the same possessive suffix, parallel to mitzvotai, both objects of shamor.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative vav attached to yo'mer ("he said", H0559), a standard qal narrative form introducing direct speech, followed by the subject Yehovah (H3068) and the addressee marked by 'el-Mosheh ("to Moses", H0413 + H4872). The question itself begins with the compound interrogative 'ad-'anah, which does not ask about a specific point in time but expresses a rhetorical complaint about ongoing duration — "until when" implies "how much longer will this continue."

The main verb me'antem is piel perfect, second masculine plural, addressing the people collectively even though only Moses is named as addressee; the perfect aspect presents the refusal as an accomplished, recurring state rather than a single act. This verb governs the infinitive shamor ("to keep"), which in turn takes two coordinated objects: mitzvotai ("my commandments") and torotai ("my laws"), both feminine plural nouns bearing the 1st person singular suffix -i ("my"), marking Yehovah as their possessor. The parallel plural nouns, joined by the conjunction ve- ("and", H9002), present the object of refusal as a двух-part but overlapping category: specific directives (mitzvot) and broader instructions (torot).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders me'antem ("you have refused") with οὐ βούλεσθε ("you are not willing"), and shamor ("to keep") with εἰσακούειν ("to listen to/obey"), shifting the semantic focus from custodial keeping to attentive obedience. The LXX also gives τὸν νόμον μου ("my law") in the singular, where the Hebrew torotai is plural ("my laws/instructions"). The Vulgate's custodire matches the Hebrew shamor ("to keep") more closely, but likewise uses the singular legem meam ("my law") against the Hebrew plural.