Exodus 2:11
וַיְהִי׀ בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם וַיִּגְדַּל מֹשֶׁה וַיֵּצֵא אֶל־אֶחָיו וַיַּרְא בְּסִבְלֹתָם וַיַּרְא אִישׁ מִצְרִי מַכֶּה אִישׁ־עִבְרִי מֵאֶחָֽיו׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיְהִ֣י׀ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיִּגְדַּ֤ל מֹשֶׁה֙ וַיֵּצֵ֣א אֶל־אֶחָ֔יו וַיַּ֖רְא בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם וַיַּרְא֙ אִ֣ישׁ מִצְרִ֔י מַכֶּ֥ה אִישׁ־עִבְרִ֖י מֵאֶחָֽיו׃
Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ταῖς πολλαῖς ἐκείναις μέγας γενόμενος Μωυσῆς ἐξῆλθεν πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς αὐτοῦ τοὺς υἱοὺς Ισραήλ. κατανοήσας δὲ τὸν πόνον αὐτῶν ὁρᾷ ἄνθρωπον Αἰγύπτιον τύπτοντα τινα Ἑβραῖον τῶν ἑαυτοῦ ἀδελφῶν τῶν υἱῶν Ἰσραήλ.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
In diebus illis postquam creverat Moyses, egressus est ad fratres suos: viditque afflictionem eorum, et virum ægyptium percutientem quemdam de Hebræis fratribus suis.
En aquellos días, cuando Moisés ya era adulto, salió a ver a su propia gente y vio sus duros trabajos. Vio que un egipcio estaba golpeando a un hebreo, uno de los suyos.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y en aquellos días acaeció que, crecido ya Moisés, salió á sus hermanos, y vió sus cargas: y observó á un Egipcio que hería á uno de los Hebreos, sus hermanos.
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and observed their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse narrates a transition in Moses's life: after he had grown up, he went out to observe his kinsmen and witnessed their forced labor, then saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, identified as one of his own brothers. The Hebrew text uses a chain of five consecutive narrative verbs to move the story forward in rapid succession.
Key words
- va-yeHi ("and it was", H1961) — narrative wayyiqtol form opening the temporal clause "and it happened."
- va-yig'dal ("and he grew up", H1431) — qal narrative form marking Moses's physical/social maturation as a discrete narrative event.
- sivlo-Tam ("their forced labor", H5450) — feminine plural construct noun, a term specifically denoting burdens of slave labor, governed by the preposition be ("in/among").
- maKeh ("striking", H5221) — hiphil participle, denoting ongoing or repeated causative action ("the one who strikes"), contrasting with the finite wayyiqtol verbs surrounding it.
- 'eHav ("his brothers", H0251I) — masculine plural construct with pronominal suffix, appearing twice (v.13 and v.28), framing the entire verse.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of five wayyiqtol ("and then...") verbs: yehi ("it was"), yigdal ("he grew"), yetze' ("he went out"), yar' ("he looked"), yar' ("he saw"). This chaining creates a rapid sequence of narrated actions without subordination — each event follows directly from the previous one. Notably, the same root ra'ah ("to see") appears twice in immediate succession (yar' at position 16 and again at position 21), but with different syntax: the first instance takes the preposition be ("in/among their burdens"), suggesting an act of observing or taking note among the labor, while the second takes a direct object ("a man"), denoting a specific visual perception of one scene.
The phrase 'el-'eHav ("to his brothers," v.13) and me'eHav ("from his brothers," v.28) form a frame around the verse: it opens with Moses going out toward "his brothers" and closes with the beaten man identified as one "from his brothers." The referent of "his" (Moses's own kin) is grammatically continuous but not further specified in the Hebrew — the two men are described only by gentilic terms, 'ish mitzri ("an Egyptian man", combining H0376G and H4713) and 'ish 'ivri ("a Hebrew man", combining H0376G and H5680), paired symmetrically.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders 'eHav ("his brothers") with the added specification "τοὺς υἱοὺς Ισραήλ" ("the sons of Israel"), making explicit an identification not stated in the Hebrew. The LXX also converts the first yar' ("he looked/saw") into a participle, κατανοήσας ("having considered/perceived"), followed by a separate finite verb ὁρᾷ ("he sees") for the second instance — restructuring the Hebrew's two parallel finite verbs into a subordinate-main clause relationship. The Vulgate renders sivlotam ("their forced labor") as "afflictionem eorum" ("their affliction"), a more general term than the Hebrew's specific reference to labor burdens.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.