Exodus 4:13

Summary

Moses responds to YHWH with a formula of entreaty, asking him to "send by the hand of" whoever he will send. The Hebrew phrasing is elliptical and does not explicitly name a substitute, unlike some translations that supply "someone else."

Key words

• bi ("pardon me", H0994) — an interjection of entreaty, often introducing a hesitant or urgent request to a superior; it does not carry independent lexical meaning beyond signaling deference.
• 'adonai ("O Lord", H0136) — a title of address, here vocative, marking the addressee as a superior/master.
• shelach ("send", H7971) — qal imperative, second person masculine singular: a direct command/request form, softened by the following particle.
• na' ("please", H4994) — a particle of entreaty attached to the imperative, reinforcing the tone of respectful request rather than a bare order.
• tishlach ("[you] will send", H7971) — same root as shelach, but here qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, expressing an action not yet completed — future or potential.

What the text says

The clause structure is built around two forms of the same verbal root sh-l-ch ("to send"): first as an imperative (shelach, "send"), then as an imperfect (tishlach, "you will send"). This repetition creates a construction that in Hebrew reads literally as "send, please, by the hand of [the one] you will send" — the object of the second verb is left grammatically unspecified, functioning almost as a relative clause without an explicit relative pronoun ("[whoever] you will send"). The construct noun yad ("hand of", H3027) is used idiomatically to mean "by the agency of," a common Biblical Hebrew idiom for delegated action.

The interjection bi ("pardon me") together with 'adonai ("O Lord") and the particle na' ("please") frames the utterance as a polite but urgent appeal to a superior, rather than a flat imperative. The imperfect tishlach leaves open who the sent agent will be — the Hebrew text itself does not specify "another" person; that identification is an interpretive addition found in some versions.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the clause with προχείρισαι δυνάμενον ἄλλον ὃν ἀποστελεῖς ("appoint another who is able, whom you will send"), explicitly adding "another" (ἄλλον) and "being able" (δυνάμενον), which have no direct lexical counterpart in the Hebrew yad-tishlach phrase. The Vulgate's mitte quem missurus es ("send whom you are about to send") stays closer to the Hebrew's open-ended relative construction, without adding "another." Modern translations such as the BSB ("send someone else") follow the LXX's interpretive expansion rather than the more literal, unspecified Hebrew phrasing.