Exodus 19:5

Summary

Exodus 19:5 presents a conditional statement: if the addressees (grammatically plural "you") listen attentively to a voice and keep a covenant, they will become a segullah ("possession", H5459) among all peoples. The verse closes with a causal clause grounding this status in a claim about the whole earth.

Key words

• sha.Mo.a' ("to listen", H8085H) — infinitive absolute preceding the finite verb of the same root; this doubling construction intensifies the verbal idea, often rendered in translations as "indeed" or "diligently."
• tish.me.'U ("you will listen", H8085H) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, expressing future or continued action; paired with the infinitive absolute above.
• she.mar.Tem ("you will keep", H8104G) — qal sequential (waw-consecutive) perfect, 2nd masculine plural; this form continues the conditional sequence begun by the imperfect in word 5.
• h.Yi.tem ("you will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, 2nd masculine plural; the third verb in the chain, marking the resulting state.
• se.gu.Lah ("a possession", H5459) — feminine singular noun, unmodified by article, functioning as a predicate noun after "you will be to me."

What the text says

The verse opens with ve ("and", H9002) plus 'a.Tah ("therefore", H6258), marking a transition from the preceding narrative to a direct address. The conditional particle 'im ("if", H0518A) introduces the protasis, which is built on three sequential verb forms sharing the same grammatical chain: an imperfect (tishme'u) intensified by a preceding infinitive absolute of the same root (shamoa), followed by two sequential perfects (shemartem, heyitem). This chain — imperfect followed by consecutive perfects — is a standard Biblical Hebrew mechanism for expressing a series of conditions and consequences tied together in time and logic: listening, then keeping, then becoming.

The object of listening is expressed through be-qoli ("to my voice", combining H9003 and H6963A with the 1st person suffix H9020), using the construct form of qol ("voice") with a pronominal suffix rather than a separate possessive word. Similarly, "my covenant" (beriti) uses the construct noun berit ("covenant", H1285) with the same suffix pattern. The apodosis states the result: "you will be to me a segullah" — the preposition li ("to me", H9005+H9030) marks the beneficiary/possessor, and segullah stands as an unarticulated predicate noun, comparing this status "from all the peoples" (mikkol ha'ammim, H9006+H3605+H9009+H5971A). The final clause, introduced by ki ("for", H3588A), repeats the construction "to me" (li) followed by kol ha'aretz ("all the earth", H3605+H9009+H0776G), providing the stated basis for the preceding claim.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders segullah (H5459) as λαὸς περιούσιος ("a people of possession/abundance"), adding the noun "people" (λαός) where the Hebrew has only the noun segullah without an explicit head noun. The Vulgate uses peculium ("private property"), a single noun paralleling the Hebrew structure more closely than the LXX's two-word phrase. The infinitive absolute construction (shamoa tishme'u) has no formal equivalent in Greek or Latin; the LXX renders it as ἀκοῇ ἀκούσητε (a dative noun plus verb, imitating the Hebrew doubling), while the Vulgate simplifies it to a single verb, audieritis ("you will have heard"), without intensifying doubling.