Exodus 2:14

Summary

An unnamed man (implied as one of the two Hebrews Moses had intervened for) challenges Moses's authority, asking who appointed him ruler and judge, and confronts him with the accusation of killing the Egyptian. Moses reacts with fear and states to himself that the matter has become known.

Key words

• sa.me. ("did he appoint", H7760A) — qal perfect, completed action; used rhetorically in a question that denies rather than affirms Moses's authority.
• ha ("¿", H9008) — interrogative particle prefixed to the infinitive, turning what could be a statement into a pointed question ("is it to kill me...?").
• ha.re.Ge.ni ("kill", H2026) — infinitive with 1st-person suffix ("to kill me"), functioning as the object of the following participle rather than a finite verb.
• 'o.Mer ("saying", H0559) — qal participle, masculine singular; expresses an ongoing or intended action ("you are saying/intending"), contrasting with the completed perfects used elsewhere in the verse.
• no.Da' ("it is known", H3045) — niphal perfect; the niphal stem marks the action as happening to the subject ha.davar ("the matter") without naming an agent, i.e. no one is specified as the one who made it known.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav pattern (va-yomer, H9001+H0559) that continues the story's chain of speech, but the speaker is not named in the Hebrew clause itself — it is only clear from context that it is "the man" mentioned earlier in the chapter. The first question uses sa.me. (H7760A), a qal perfect, to challenge an already-completed act of appointment: the grammar presupposes that such an appointment would have had to occur, and the question denies it happened. The second question builds on the interrogative ha (H9008) attached to the infinitive ha.re.Ge.ni (H2026, "to kill me"), which is not itself the main verb; the main verb is the participle 'o.Mer (H0559, "saying/intending"), so the structure literally reads "Is it to kill me that you are saying/intending?" — a nominalized infinitival object governed by a participle, a construction that highlights ongoing intention rather than a single completed act.

The final clause, no.Da' ha.davar (H3045 + H1697I), uses a niphal perfect, which reports the state of being known without identifying who did the knowing — the matter simply "has become known."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew va.yomer (H0559) at the end of the verse is glossed as "he thought," yet it is the same verb used earlier for "he said" — the Hebrew itself does not formally distinguish speech from thought. The Septuagint renders the final clause as a question, "Εἰ οὕτως ἐμφανὲς γέγονεν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο" ("How has this thing become so evident?"), and the Vulgate follows this interrogative form, "Quomodo palam factum est verbum istud?" The Hebrew, by contrast, presents this as a declarative statement introduced by 'a.Khen ("truly", H0403): "Truly, the matter is known." Both LXX and Vulgate thus render as a question what the Hebrew text presents as an affirmation.