Exodus 17:6

Summary

Exodus 17:6 records a divine speech in which God announces his presence at a rock in Horeb and instructs Moses to strike it so that water will emerge for the people. The verse closes with a narrative note that Moses executed this action in view of the elders of Israel.

Key words

• hin.Ni ("here I am / behold me", H2005+H9040) — the interjection hinneh fused with a first-person suffix, producing an emphatic self-presentation, "here I am," rather than a simple statement of location.
• 'o.Med ("standing", H5975) — qal participle, masculine singular, denoting an ongoing or imminent stance ("[will be] standing") rather than a completed action.
• hi.Ki.ta ("you will strike", H5221) — hiphil sequential perfect, second person masculine. The hiphil stem marks causation ("cause to strike/hit"), and the sequential perfect form continues the chain of instructions begun with hin.Ni.
• ya.tze.'U ("they will come out", H3318) — qal sequential perfect, third person plural, continuing the same narrative chain and describing the result of the striking.
• zik.Nei ("elders of", H2205) — masculine plural construct adjective, linking to Yisra'El ("Israel", H3478) to specify whose presence witnessed Moses' action.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with hin.Ni 'o.Med ("here I am, standing"), a construction that presents God's positioning at the rock as an immediate, self-announced fact rather than a future prediction. This is followed by a chain of verbs marked as sequential perfects (ve- + perfect): hi.Ki.ta ("you will strike"), ya.tze.'U ("they will come out"), and sha.Tah ("it/he will drink"). This grammatical chaining, typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative and instructional sequences, presents the striking, the emergence of water, and the drinking as a linked sequence of consequential events following directly from the initial divine self-presentation.

The final clause shifts to a true narrative past tense with va-yi.Ya.'as ("and he did"), marking a clear break from the instructional sequence to a report of fulfillment. The phrase le-'ei.Nei zik.Nei Yisra'El ("to the eyes of the elders of Israel") uses a construct chain ('ei.Nei + zik.Nei + Yisra'El) to specify the witnesses of Moses' action, emphasizing visual observation ("eyes of") as the mode of confirmation.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text reads ve-sha.Tah ha-'Am ("and the people will drink"), a third-person sequential perfect describing the people as subject. The LXX renders this as πίεται ὁ λαός μου ("my people will drink"), adding the possessive "my" (μου), which is not present in the Hebrew ha-'Am ("the people", H5971). The Vulgate's ut bibat populus ("so that the people may drink") also lacks a possessive but frames the clause with a purpose construction ("so that"), differing from the sequential chain structure of the Hebrew.