Exodus 3:18

Summary

Exodus 3:18 continues Yehovah's instructions to Moses, describing what will happen when Moses speaks to Israel and then to Pharaoh: the elders will listen, they will go together to the king of Egypt, and they will request a three-day journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to Yehovah their God.

Key words

• sha.me.'U ("they will listen", H8085G) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the chain of future events set up by God's prior speech; grammatically it reads as a completed act but functions as a future result in this narrative sequence.
• nik.Rah ("he has met", H7136A) — niphal perfect of a root describing encounter; the niphal stem gives the passive/reflexive sense "has presented himself to us" rather than an active "he found us."
• ne.la.khah ("let us go", H1980G) — listed as a qal form expressing purpose/volition ("to do/in doing"); combined with the particle na' ("please", H4994) it produces a request rather than a bare statement.
• niz.be.Chah ("let us sacrifice", H2076) — same volitive construction as ne.la.khah, paired with it to state the purpose of the requested journey.
• 'e.lo.Hei ("God of", H0430G) — masculine plural noun in construct state; though plural in form, it functions as a singular referent when bound to Yehovah or to ha'ivriyim ("the Hebrews", H5680).

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of sequential perfects (ve+perfect) — sha.me.'U, va.Ta, 'a.mar.Tem — each attached by the narrative vav (H9001) to the preceding verb, so the sentence reads as one continuous projected sequence of events rather than isolated clauses: listening, going, speaking. This chaining is a common way Biblical Hebrew narrates a series of future actions stemming from a divine command.

Within the reported speech itself, the construction shifts to two volitive forms, ne.la.khah and niz.be.Chah, both accompanied by the particle na' ("please", H4994), marking the speech as a request addressed to the king of Egypt rather than a demand. The niphal verb nik.Rah ("has met", H7136A) presents the encounter with Yehovah as something that happened to the people, using the niphal's passive/reflexive nuance instead of an active verb of finding.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds the name Φαραώ ("Pharaoh") after "king of Egypt," a detail not present in the Hebrew Me.lekh Mitz.Ra.yim ("king of Egypt", H4428G/H4714G). The LXX also renders nik.Rah ("he has met", H7136A) with προσκέκληται ("has called/summoned"), a different nuance from the Hebrew niphal sense of encounter. Additionally, the LXX uses ὁ θεός ("the God") without the divine name where the Hebrew has Yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068G) explicitly named. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew structure and content closely, including the divine name and the description of Yehovah "meeting" the people (vocavit, "called," similarly diverging slightly from "has met").