Exodus 16:4

Summary

Yehovah tells Moses he will make bread rain down from the sky for the people. Each day they are to go out and gather only what that day requires, so that Yehovah may test whether the people will walk in his torah or not.

Key words

• mamTir ("about to rain down", H4305) — hiphil (causative) participle: not a simple future verb but a present-progressive/imminent nuance, "I am [in the act of] causing to rain," reinforced by the preceding hinneni ("here I am").
• devar-yom beyomo ("a matter of a day in its day", H1697/H3117) — a construct chain repeating yom ("day", H3117) twice, literally "the-thing-of-a-day in its day," producing the distributive sense "a day's portion on its day."
• lema'an ("so that", H4616) — subordinating particle introducing purpose, linking the gathering instruction to the test that follows.
• anassennu ("I should test it/him", H5254) — piel (intensive) verb with pronominal suffix "it/him," expressing an intensified or deliberate act of testing, object being the people (referred back to as "it/him").
• torati ("my law", H8451 + H9020) — noun with 1st person suffix, "my torah," the specific standard against which the walking (yelekh) is measured.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative chain va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) attached to Yehovah (H3068) speaking el-Mosheh ("to Moses", H0413/H4872), a standard narrative introduction. The divine speech itself begins with hinneni ("here I am/behold me", H2005+H9040) followed immediately by the participle mamTir (H4305), a hiphil form of the verb for raining, which grammatically expresses an action already underway or about to begin rather than a distant future — the "I" of hinneni and the participle together stress immediacy.

The next clause uses two sequential perfects, yatsa' ("it will go out", H3318) and laketu ("they will gather", H3950), both continuing the narrative sequence set up by the initial participle: the people's going out and gathering are presented as consequences following from the raining of bread. The phrase devar-yom beyomo (H1697 construct + H3117 + suffix H9023) uses a construct chain with repetition of "day" to produce a distributive reading, "each day's portion in its day," without any separate word for "enough" or "sufficient" in the Hebrew itself.

The final clause is introduced by lema'an (H4616), marking purpose, governing the piel infinitive/verb anassennu (H5254) — "so that I may test him/it." The suffix -nu ("it/him", H9033) refers back to the people (ha'am, H5971A) treated as a singular collective. The test is phrased as a direct question with the interrogative ha- (H9008): ha-yelekh ("will he walk", H1980) betorati ("in my law", H8451+H9020) im-lo' ("or not", H0518A+H3808) — a yes/no construction embedded in the purpose clause.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew devar-yom beyomo ("a matter of a day in its day") is rendered in the LXX as τὸ τῆς ἡμέραν εἰς ἡμέραν ("that of the day, into the day"), a similarly distributive but structurally different Greek phrase. The Vulgate expands this into quæ sufficiunt per singulos dies ("what suffices for each day"), explicitly adding the notion of "sufficiency" (sufficiunt) that is not a separate lexical item in the Hebrew construct chain itself. The Hebrew betorati ("in my law/instruction", H8451) is translated by the LXX as τῷ νόμῳ μου ("my law") and by the Vulgate as in lege mea ("in my law"), both matching closely, while modern renderings such as BSB use "My instructions" for the same word.