Exodus 33:1

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to depart from the current location together with the people he brought out of Egypt, and to go up to the land promised by oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to be given to their descendants.

Key words

• y.da.Ber ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative verb, marking the intensive/emphatic form of speaking, introducing direct divine speech.
• lekh ("go", H1980G) and 'a.Leh ("go up", H5927G) — two consecutive qal imperatives, both second-person masculine singular, stacking two commands directed at Moses.
• he.'e.Li.ta ("you have brought up", H5927H) — hiphil perfect, causative form of the same root as 'a.Leh; describes a completed past action (Moses causing the people to go up out of Egypt), contrasting with the imperative use of the same root in "go up."
• Nish.ba'.ti ("I swore", H7650) — niphal perfect, first person; the niphal stem here carries the sense of an oath-taking, a completed act referenced as the basis for the land promise.
• zar.'a.Kha ("your offspring", H2233H + H9021) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, linking "seed/offspring" directly to "your," specifying the beneficiary of the land grant.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative sequence marker va attached to y.da.Ber, establishing this as a new speech event within the ongoing narrative: "and Yehovah spoke to Moses." The core instruction is built on two adjacent qal imperatives, lekh ("go") and 'a.Leh ("go up"), both addressed to Moses directly ("you," 'a.Tah, H0859A). The phrase mi.Zeh ("from here") specifies departure from the present location without naming it explicitly in this clause.

The clause "you and the people" ('a.Tah ve.ha.'Am) uses the definite article on 'Am ("people," H5971A) to mark a specific, known group, further identified by the relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("which/who"). This relative clause uses the hiphil perfect he.'e.Li.ta ("you have brought up") — the same verbal root as the imperative 'a.Leh ("go up") — creating a wordplay in the Hebrew: Moses is told to "go up" ('a.Leh) with the people he already "brought up" (he.'e.Li.ta) from Egypt. This root repetition is a feature of the Hebrew that is not typically visible in translation.

The second half of the verse shifts to the oath sworn to the patriarchs. The niphal perfect Nish.ba'.ti ("I swore") reports Yehovah's completed act of swearing, followed by three prepositional phrases naming Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in sequence, each governed by le ("to"). The infinitive le.'Mor ("saying") introduces embedded direct speech, within which the qal imperfect 'et.te.Ne.nah ("I will give it") expresses the future-oriented promise, with the suffix nah ("it/her") referring back to 'A.retz ("land," feminine noun).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders y.da.Ber ("he spoke," piel) with εἶπεν ("said"), a simpler verb than the Hebrew's intensive form. The Hebrew's two separate imperatives lekh ("go") and 'a.Leh ("go up") appear in the LXX as πορεύου ἀνάβηθι, preserving two verbs, while the Vulgate condenses this into a single "Vade, ascende" sequence similarly split. The SBLIBRE Spanish translation separates the command into two sentences ("Anda, vete... Suban"), reorganizing the imperative structure differently from the single continuous Hebrew clause.