Exodus 4:28

Summary

The verse reports that Moses relayed to Aaron the complete content of two things Yehovah had given him: the words Yehovah had sent him to speak, and the signs Yehovah had commanded him to perform. The sentence uses two parallel object clauses, each headed by kol ("all") and closed by a relative clause with a pronominal suffix referring back to Moses.

Key words

• va-yagged ("he told", H5046) — hiphil (causative) narrative form: literally "he caused to be told/made known," marking the report as an act of transmission, not mere speech.
• divrei ("[the] words of", H1697G) — masculine plural construct, bound to YHWH, meaning "the words belonging to/from Yehovah," not generic "words."
• shelacho ("he had sent him", H7971G) — qal perfect with 3rd-person masculine singular suffix; the perfect marks the sending as completed prior to the telling.
• ha-otot ("the signs", H0226G) — feminine plural noun with definite article, referring to a specific, already-established set of signs.
• tzivvahu ("he had commanded him", H6680) — piel (intensive) perfect with suffix; the piel stem intensifies the verb of command compared to a simple qal.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on a single main verb, va-yagged ("he told", H5046), with Moses as subject and Aaron as indirect object (le-Aharon, "to Aaron"). Two direct objects follow, each introduced by the untranslated object marker et (H0853) and each governed by kol ("all", H3605) in construct: first "all the words of Yehovah" (kol-divrei YHWH), then "all the signs" (kol ha-otot). Each object is further specified by a relative clause using asher ("which", H0834A): the words are those "he had sent him" (shelacho, qal perfect), and the signs are those "he had commanded him" (tzivvahu, piel perfect). Both relative clauses carry a 3rd-person masculine singular suffix (-o/-hu, H9033) referring to Moses, making explicit that Yehovah's sending and commanding were directed at Moses personally, which Moses now passes on to Aaron.

The parallel construction — kol + noun + asher + perfect verb + suffix — creates a balanced structure distinguishing two categories: spoken content (divrei, "words") tied to the act of sending, and symbolic acts (otot, "signs") tied to the act of commanding.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate follows the Hebrew structure closely, rendering otot as "signa" ("signs"), matching the Hebrew noun's semantic domain. The LXX, however, renders the second object as "πάντα τὰ ῥήματα" ("all the things/words"), using a term for "matters" or "words" rather than a word for "signs," diverging from the Hebrew ha-otot ("the signs"). The LXX also assigns "ἀπέστειλεν" ("he sent") to the first clause and "ἐνετείλατο" ("he commanded") to the second, preserving the two-verb division found in the Hebrew, but shifting the noun in the second clause away from the semantic field of "signs" toward a more general "things commanded."