Exodus 24:4

Summary

The verse narrates Moses writing down all the words of Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G), then rising early the next day to build an altar at the base of the mountain, accompanied by twelve standing stones corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Key words

• va-yikhTov ("and he wrote", H3789) — qal narrative verb with prefixed narrative vav; marks a sequential action ("and then he wrote"), placing the writing as the first event in the chain.
• divRei ("words of", H1697G) — masculine plural construct; grammatically bound to Yehovah, forming "the words of Yehovah," indicating the content written is not a single utterance but a plural collection of statements.
• va-yashKem ("and he rose early", H7925) — hiphil (causative) narrative verb; the causative stem here conveys the sense of "causing himself to rise early," a nuance distinct from a simple qal "he rose."
• mizBeach ("altar", H4196) — masculine singular noun, object of yiven ("he built", H1129); denotes the single structure Moses constructs.
• matzeVah ("pillar", H4676) — feminine singular noun counted by the compound number "twelve" (sheTeim 'esReh, H8147/H6240); the singular noun form after a plural numeral is a feature of Hebrew numeral syntax, where the counted noun stays grammatically singular.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four narrative verbs joined by the narrative vav (va-): yikhtov ("he wrote"), yashkem ("he rose early"), yiven ("he built"), each introducing a sequential action performed by Moses. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before kol-divrei Yehovah ("all the words of Yehovah") marks this phrase as the object of "wrote," and the construct chain kol-divrei Yehovah ties "all," "words of," and "Yehovah" into a single bound phrase: "all the words of Yehovah."

The second clause uses the hiphil verb yashkem ("he rose early") followed by ba-boker ("in the morning"), a common idiom pairing the causative verb with the time noun. The third action, building the altar (mizbeach), is located tachat ha-har ("under the mountain," construct + noun), meaning at its base. Finally, the twelve pillars (sheteim 'esreh matzevah) are linked by the preposition li ("for") to shneim 'asar shivtei Yisra'el ("the twelve tribes of Israel"), a construct phrase where shivtei ("tribes of") governs Yisra'el ("Israel"), expressing the pillars' correspondence to the tribes rather than stating explicitly what they materially are.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text calls the standing objects matzevah ("pillar," H4676), a term for a standing stone or monument, without specifying material. The LXX renders this as λίθους ("stones"), making explicit that they are stone, a detail not stated by the Hebrew noun itself. The Vulgate uses titulos ("markers/monuments"), a different semantic emphasis focusing on the object as a marker rather than as stone. The Hebrew tachat ha-har ("under the mountain") is rendered by the Vulgate as ad radices montis ("at the base/roots of the mountain"), an interpretive expansion of the spatial preposition tachat ("under").