Exodus 32:27

Summary

Moses relays a command from Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) 'elohei Yisra'El ("God of Israel", H0430G/H3478) to the Levites: each man is to arm himself, move through the camp from gate to gate, and kill brother, friend, and neighbor. The verse is direct speech embedded within narrative, introduced by a messenger formula.

Key words

• koh ("thus", H3541) — adverb opening the quotation formula "thus says," marking the following words as a direct citation of Yehovah's speech, a standard prophetic/messenger introduction.
• Simu ("put", H7760H) — qal imperative plural, a direct command to the group addressed ("them"), setting the tone of urgent, collective action.
• 'ish ("everyone", H0376I) — repeated four times (lines 11, 28, 33, 38) as a distributive marker; literally "a man," it functions here as "each one," individualizing the collective imperatives that follow.
• 'ivru ("pass", H5674A) and shuvu ("return", H7725G) — paired qal imperatives forming a hendiadys-like movement command: "pass and return," i.e., traverse repeatedly.
• hirgu ("kill", H2026) — qal imperative plural, the final and most severe command in the sequence, governing the three direct objects ('achiv, re'ehu, qerovo — "his brother," "his friend," "his neighbor").

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative verb vaYo'mer ("and he said", H0559) introducing reported speech, then shifts to koh 'amar ("thus says", H0559 in perfect aspect) — a formulaic construction marking the words as a fixed, authoritative pronouncement attributed to Yehovah 'elohei Yisra'El. The perfect tense of 'amar here does not indicate past narrative time within the quotation but functions as the standard "messenger formula" perfect, common in reported divine speech.

The body of the command consists of five qal imperatives in sequence — Simu, 'ivru, shuvu, and hirgu — all second person masculine plural, addressed collectively to the group, yet each is individualized through the repeated distributive 'ish ("each one," "a man"). This grammatical pattern — plural imperative verb governing a singular 'ish subject — creates a construction where the group is commanded as a whole but the action (arming, moving, killing) is to be carried out person by person. The three direct objects of hirgu are each marked by the object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) and constructed with the possessive suffix -o/-hu ("his"): 'achiv ("his brother"), re'ehu ("his friend"), qerovo ("his neighbor"), forming an escalating or expanding list of relational categories.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders koh 'amar Yehovah with λέγει Κύριος in the present tense (not aorist), differing from the Hebrew perfect 'amar, though both function as formulaic introductions. The Hebrew qerovo ("his neighbor/kin," H7138, adjective used substantively) is rendered in the LXX as τὸν ἔγγιστα αὐτοῦ ("the nearest to him"), and the Vulgate as proximum suum ("his neighbor/relative"), both broadly corresponding but using slightly different semantic ranges (spatial/relational nearness versus the Hebrew's kinship-adjacent term).