Exodus 17:3
וַיִּצְמָא שָׁם הָעָם לַמַּיִם וַיָּלֶן הָעָם עַל־מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמֶר לָמָּה זֶּה הֶעֱלִיתָנוּ מִמִּצְרַיִם לְהָמִית אֹתִי וְאֶת־בָּנַי וְאֶת־מִקְנַי בַּצָּמָֽא׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיִּצְמָ֨א שָׁ֤ם הָעָם֙ לַמַּ֔יִם וַיָּ֥לֶן הָעָ֖ם עַל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיֹּ֗אמֶר לָ֤מָּה זֶּה֙ הֶעֱלִיתָ֣נוּ מִמִּצְרַ֔יִם לְהָמִ֥ית אֹתִ֛י וְאֶת־בָּנַ֥י וְאֶת־מִקְנַ֖י בַּצָּמָֽא׃
ἐδίψησεν δὲ ἐκεῖ ὁ λαὸς ὕδατι· καὶ ἐγόγγυζεν ἐκεῖ ὁ λαὸς πρὸς Μωυσῆν Ινα τί τοῦτο ἀνεβίβασας ἡμᾶς ἐξ Αἰγύπτου, όποκτcιναι ἡμᾶς καὶ τὰ ἡμῶν καὶ τὰ κτήνη τῷ δίψει;
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Sitivit ergo ibi populus præ aquæ penuria, et murmuravit contra Moysen, dicens: Cur fecisti nos exire de Ægypto, ut occideres nos, et liberos nostros, ac jumenta siti?
Pero la gente estaba muerta de sed; por eso murmuraron contra Moisés y dijeron: “¿Para qué nos sacaste de Egipto? ¿Solo para matarnos de sed a nosotros, a nuestros hijos y a nuestro ganado?”
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Así que el pueblo tuvo allí sed de agua, y murmuró contra Moisés, y dijo: ¿ Por qué nos hiciste subir de Egipto, para matarnos de sed á nosotros, y á nuestros hijos, y á nuestros ganados?
But the people thirsted for water there, and they grumbled against Moses: “ Why have you brought us out of Egypt — to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse narrates that the people became thirsty for water, grumbled against Moses, and confronted him with an accusatory question about why he brought them out of Egypt, framing it as an act intended to kill them, their children, and their livestock through thirst.
Key words
- yitzMa' ("it was thirsty", H6770) — qal narrative form, marking a sequential past event: "and then it was thirsty."
- yaLen ("it grumbled", H3885B) — hiphil narrative form; the causative stem is lexicalized here to mean "to grumble/murmur," continuing the narrative chain with va.
- he'eliTa ("did you bring up", H5927H) — hiphil perfect, 2nd person masculine singular, a completed causative action ("you caused to go up"), directly accusing Moses of agency in the exodus event.
- lehaMit ("to put to death", H4191) — hiphil infinitive, expressing purpose or result ("in order to kill"), linking the bringing-up from Egypt to an alleged deadly intent.
- tzaMa' ("thirst", H6772) — masculine singular noun with the preposition ba ("by/in the"), marking the means by which death is feared.
What the text says
The verse is built from three sequential narrative clauses, each introduced by the vav-narrative construction (va-): the people became thirsty (yitzMa'), the people grumbled (yaLen), and [Moses/the people] said (yomer). This chain structure is typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative, presenting one action after another without additional temporal markers—each verb form itself carries the sequential "and then" sense.
The direct speech begins with the interrogative mah ("why?", H4100) combined with the demonstrative zeh ("this", H2088), forming an emphatic rhetorical question "why is it that..." This is followed by the hiphil perfect he'eliTanu ("you brought us up"), which places responsibility for the action squarely on Moses through the second-person verb form and the attached pronominal suffix -nu ("us"). The purpose clause that follows, lehaMit ("to put to death"), is an infinitive construction indicating intended or perceived result, extending the accusation to include banai ("my children", built on H1121A with suffix H9020) and miknai ("my livestock", H4735 with suffix H9020), each marked by the object marker 'et (H0853). The final phrase ba-tzama' ("by the thirst") specifies the means of the feared death, closing the accusatory speech.
Differences between versions
The Hebrew verb yaLen (H3885B) is glossed as "it grumbled," and the LXX renders this with ἐγόγγυζεν ("murmured"), a close semantic match. The Vulgate uses murmuravit ("murmured"), also consistent. No major divergence in meaning appears among the Hebrew, LXX, and Vulgate for this verse based on the provided data; the versions differ mainly in stylistic phrasing (e.g., BSB's "grumbled against Moses" versus SBLIBRE's "murmured against Moses") rather than in underlying semantic content.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.