Exodus 4:3

Summary

This verse narrates a three-step sequence: an unnamed speaker commands Moses to throw an object to the ground, Moses obeys, the object becomes a snake, and Moses flees. The Hebrew text builds this through a chain of narrative verb forms without explicitly naming the speaker.

Key words

• hashlikhehu ("throw it", H7993) — hiphil (causative) imperative, second person masculine, with a masculine pronominal suffix -hu ("it/him") referring back to the object being thrown.
• artzah ("to the ground", H0776H) — feminine singular noun with the directional he (H9011), giving the sense "toward the ground," repeated identically in both the command and its execution.
• vayehi ("and it became", H1961) — qal narrative form of the verb "to be," marking the transition/result within the sequence of events.
• nachash ("snake", H5175) — masculine singular noun, the predicate of vayehi, introduced with the preposition le- ("into/as").
• mippanay ("from his presence/face", H6440G + suffix) — plural construct noun with pronominal suffix, an idiomatic expression literally "from his faces," used to mean "away from him."

What the text says

The verse is built entirely on narrative vav-consecutive verbs (vayomer, vayashlikhehu, vayehi, vayanos), a chain typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling that presents actions as sequential: "and he said... and he threw... and it became... and he fled." No new subject noun is introduced for vayomer ("he said"); the speaker is identified only through the third-person verbal form and context from the preceding verses, not by an explicit name in this clause.

The command hashlikhehu artzah and its execution vayashlikhehu artzah are grammatically identical except for the imperative-to-narrative shift in the verb stem, which underlines the exactness of Moses' compliance. The masculine suffix -hu on both forms indicates the object thrown is grammatically masculine, consistent with it being the staff mentioned earlier in the chapter, even though the staff itself is not named in this verse. The final clause uses the idiom mippanav, literally "from his faces" (plural construct), a standard Hebrew way of expressing "away from him" or "from his presence," rather than a literal reference to a face.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate inserts "Dominus" ("the Lord") as the explicit subject of "he said" (Dixitque Dominus), a name not present in the Hebrew clause vayomer, which leaves the subject unstated. The LXX also leaves the subject unspecified (kai eipen, "and he said"), matching the Hebrew's lack of an explicit name at this point. Additionally, the LXX renders the object thrown with a feminine Greek pronoun (autēn), whereas the Hebrew suffix -hu on hashlikhehu is masculine.