Exodus 24:15

Summary

The verse narrates two sequential actions: Moses ascends the mountain, and the cloud covers the mountain. Both verbs are introduced by the narrative vav, marking a chain of consecutive events in the story.

Key words

• va-Ya'al ("and he went up", H5927G) — qal narrative verb form; describes Moses' simple, non-intensive action of ascending.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper noun, masculine, subject of the first verb.
• Har ("mountain", H2022G) — masculine singular noun, appears twice, each time with the definite article ha ("the", H9009), referring to the same, specific mountain.
• va-y'khas ("and it covered", H3680) — piel narrative verb form; the piel stem conveys an intensive or thorough covering action, distinct from a simple qal covering.
• 'et (H0853) — direct object marker preceding ha-har ("the mountain"), marking the mountain as the object being covered, with no independent meaning of its own.

What the text says

The verse consists of two clauses joined by the narrative vav, a construction that presents actions as a sequence: "and he went up... and it covered..." This chaining device signals that the covering of the mountain happens as the next event after Moses' ascent, rather than simultaneously or in an unspecified relation.

The first clause has Mosheh as subject of the qal verb ya'al ("he went up"), followed by the preposition 'el ("to", H0413) plus ha-har ("the mountain"). The qal stem here indicates the basic, unmarked action of going up.

The second clause shifts the subject to he-'anan ("the cloud", H6051), with the verb y'khas in the piel stem. The piel stem often carries an intensive or resultative nuance compared to the qal, suggesting the covering is complete or thorough rather than partial. The object of this covering is marked explicitly by 'et before ha-har, confirming "the mountain" — the same noun and referent as in the first clause — as what is covered. The repetition of ha-har ("the mountain") in both clauses, rather than a pronoun, keeps the referent unambiguous within the two-clause sequence.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (Cumque ascendisset Moyses, operuit nubes montem) renders the first clause as a subordinate temporal construction ("when Moses had ascended"), rather than preserving the two coordinated narrative clauses of the Hebrew. The Hebrew's paratactic chain (va-...va-..., "and...and...") is thus restructured into a main-subordinate relationship in Latin. The Spanish SBLIBRE ("la cubrió por completo," "covered it completely") makes explicit the thoroughness that the Hebrew piel stem of y'khas implies morphologically, while RV1909 and BSB render it with a plain "covered," not marking that intensive nuance in translation.