Exodus 33:13

Summary

Moses asks God, conditionally on having found favor, to reveal his derakheka ("your ways", H1870G) so that Moses may know God and continue to find favor in his sight. The verse closes with an imperative asking God to take note that "this nation" is God's own people.

Key words

• matzati ("I have found", H4672) — qal perfect, 1st person singular; marks a completed action, setting up the conditional clause "if I have found favor."
• chen ("favor", H2580) — masculine singular noun, repeated twice in the verse (lines 6 and 21), forming an inclusio: the request for favor opens and closes the plea.
• hodi'eni ("show me", H3045) — hiphil (causative) imperative with 1st-person suffix "me"; the causative stem indicates Moses asks God to cause him to know, not merely to see.
• 'edà'akha ("I may know you", H3045) — same root as hodi'eni, here in a form glossed "to do/in doing" and attached to the 2nd-person suffix "you"; it links the request for "ways" to the goal of knowing God personally.
• re'eh ("consider/see", H7200H) — qal imperative, 2nd person masculine; introduces the closing clause with ki ("that", H3588A), directing attention to the status of "your people."

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional-purpose chain. It opens with 'im-na' matzati chen be'eineikha ("if I have found favor in your eyes"), using the perfect matzati to present the favor as an already-established fact within the hypothetical frame. The main request follows in the imperative hodi'eni na' et-derakheka ("show me, please, your ways"), where 'et (H0853) marks derakheka as the direct object — the "ways" (plural construct, H1870G) belonging to the addressee. The purpose clause ve'edà'akha ("and I may know you") uses the same root yada' (H3045) as the initial verb, creating a wordplay between causing-to-know and the resulting personal knowledge. A second purpose clause, introduced by lema'an ("so that", H4616), returns to 'emtza'-chen be'eineikha ("I may find favor in your eyes"), echoing the opening chen be'eineikha and closing the request in a ring structure. The final clause, joined by ve, shifts to the imperative re'eh ("see/consider") followed by ki ("that"), introducing the statement that 'ammekha ("your people", construct H5971A) is hagoy hazeh ("this nation", H1471A with definite article and demonstrative H2088) — two distinct nouns for the same group, "people" and "nation," both marked as belonging to the addressee.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders derakheka ("your ways") as σεαυτόν ("yourself"), shifting the object of the request from God's "ways" to God's own person. The Vulgate similarly reads ostende mihi faciem tuam ("show me your face"), diverging from the Hebrew "ways" toward a different image altogether. In the closing clause, the LXX adds μέγα ("great") to "nation," a qualifier not present in the Hebrew hagoy hazeh ("this nation"). The Vulgate turns the Hebrew's re'eh... ki ("see... that") into a single imperative, respice populum tuum ("look upon your people"), omitting the explicit causal marker ki found in the Hebrew.