Exodus 20:1

Summary

Exodus 20:1 introduces the following speech as a divine utterance: God speaks "all these words." The verse functions as a narrative heading, using the vav-consecutive to mark a new segment in the story and setting up the discourse that follows.

Key words

• vayedabber ("he spoke", H1696) — Piel verb with narrative vav; the Piel stem often marks intensive or repeated action, and the narrative vav links this clause sequentially to the preceding story ("and then he spoke").
• Elohim ("God", H0430) — Morphologically plural noun (masculine plural ending) but governs a singular verb (vayedabber is 3rd person singular), a grammatical pattern in which a plural-form noun refers to a single subject.
• et (H0853) — Direct object marker with no independent meaning; it signals that kol-ha-devarim ha-elleh is the grammatical object of the verb.
• kol ("all", H3605) — Construct-state noun, meaning "all of"; it grammatically binds to ha-devarim ("the words") that follows.
• le'emor ("saying", H0559) — Qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition le- ("to/for"); functions here as a discourse marker introducing direct speech, roughly "as follows."

What the text says

The clause is built as: [vav + verb] vayedabber — [subject] Elohim — [object marker + object phrase] et kol-ha-devarim ha-elleh — [infinitive] le'emor. The verb precedes the subject, the normal word order for Biblical Hebrew narrative, and the vav-consecutive form ties this sentence into the larger narrative sequence rather than presenting it as an isolated statement.

The object phrase kol-ha-devarim ha-elleh ("all these words") is marked by et, confirming it as the direct object of "spoke." The construct form kol plus the definite noun ha-devarim ("the words") plus the demonstrative ha-elleh ("these") produces a tightly bound phrase: "all of the words, the these-ones," conventionally rendered "all these words." The final element, the infinitive le'emor ("saying"), is a standard Hebrew formula that opens direct discourse — it does not add semantic content beyond signaling that quoted speech follows.

The grammatical number mismatch between Elohim (plural in form) and vayedabber (singular verb) is a recurring feature of this noun when used for the deity in Biblical Hebrew; the singular verb agreement shows the noun functions as a singular subject here despite its plural morphology.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders H0430 Elohim as "Dominus" ("Lord") rather than a term corresponding to "God," diverging from the Hebrew noun itself, which denotes "God" (Elohim, H0430). The RV1909, SBLIBRE, and BSB all follow the Hebrew in using "God" (or "Dios"). The LXX text is not provided for this verse in the data given.