Exodus 33:12

Summary

Moses addresses Yehovah, pointing out a contradiction: Yehovah has commanded him to lead the people but has not disclosed who will accompany him, even though Yehovah has claimed to know Moses by name and to regard him with favor. The verse is built as a direct quotation of Yehovah's own words thrown back at him.

Key words

• re'eh ("see", H7200) — qal imperative, 2nd person masculine singular; an attention-directing command opening Moses' speech, not a request to literally look but to "consider" or "note."
• ha'al ("bring up", H5927) — hiphil imperative; the causative stem marks this as Yehovah's command that Moses cause the people to go up, quoted verbatim by Moses.
• hoda'tani ("you have made known to me", H3045) — hiphil perfect negated by lo ("not", H3808); the causative form of the root yada' ("to know") expresses that Yehovah has not caused Moses to know, contrasting with the same root used later.
• yeda'tikha ("I know you", H3045) — qal perfect, embedded within Moses' quotation of Yehovah's speech; the same root yada' appears here in the simple (qal) stem rather than the causative (hiphil), producing a contrast between Yehovah's claim of knowing Moses and Yehovah's failure to make something known to Moses.
• chen ("favor", H2580) construct with 'einai ("my eyes", H5869) — the noun paired with the idiom "in the eyes of," a standard construction for expressing that one has found approval.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) introducing direct speech from Moses to Yehovah. Moses' speech is structured around three quoted or referenced statements attributed to Yehovah: the command ha'al et-ha'am ha-zeh ("bring up this people"), the negated statement lo hoda'tani ("you have not made known to me") concerning who will go with him ('asher tishlach 'immi, "whom you will send with me," qal imperfect, marking future/ongoing action), and finally the quoted assurance yeda'tikha ve-shem ("I know you by name") together with matza'ta chen be-'einai ("you have found favor in my eyes").

The grammatical pivot is the repetition of the root yada' ("to know") in two different stems: the hiphil (causative) hoda'tani, describing an action Yehovah has not performed toward Moses, and the qal (simple) yeda'tikha, describing Yehovah's own stated knowledge of Moses. This stem contrast — causative negated versus simple affirmed — is a feature of the Hebrew verbal system that is not distinguishable in English or Latin translations, where both are rendered simply as forms of "to know" or "to make known."

Differences between versions

The Spanish SBLIBRE rendering adds "a la tierra prometida" ("to the promised land") after "lead this people," an interpretive expansion not present in the Hebrew text, which only has ha'al et-ha'am ha-zeh ("bring up this people") without any reference to a destination. The LXX text as given shows the divine name absent after πρός ("to"), where the Hebrew has the explicit YHWH (H3068G).