Exodus 4:30

Summary

The verse reports that Aaron spoke to the people all the words Yehovah had previously told Moses, and that the signs were performed in the sight of the people. The sentence links two actions — speech and action — both introduced by narrative verb forms that continue the story sequence.

Key words

• yedaBer ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative form; the piel stem here carries an intensive or communicative nuance ("to speak/declare"), and the narrative vav ties it to the ongoing storyline.
• dibBer ("he had spoken", H1696G) — same root and stem as above, but in the perfect, marking an action completed prior to the main narrative line: Yehovah's speaking to Moses happened before Aaron's speaking to the people.
• 'et (H0853) — the untranslatable direct object marker, showing that "all the words" is the grammatical object of yedaBer.
• kol-haddevaRim ("all the words", H3605 + H1697G) — a construct phrase, "all of the words," which is then further specified by the relative clause 'asher dibber Yehovah 'el Mosheh ("which Yehovah had spoken to Moses").
• le'einei ha'am ("to the eyes of the people", H5869H + H5971A) — a construct phrase using the dual noun for "eyes," an idiom meaning "in the sight of" or "before" the people.

What the text says

The verse is built on two narrative-vav clauses: vayedabber ("and he spoke") and vayya'as ("and he did"), the standard Hebrew way of advancing a story sequence. The first clause has Aaron as its explicit subject, transmitting "all the words" (kol-haddevarim) that Yehovah had spoken to Moses — a completed action marked by the perfect dibber, distinguishing it in time from Aaron's speaking to the people.

The second clause, vayya'as ha'otot le'einei ha'am ("and he did the signs before the eyes of the people"), does not name its subject; the verb form simply carries "he" as its grammatical subject. Since Aaron is the most recently named subject in the sentence, Hebrew grammar allows the referent of "he" in this clause to be read as continuing from Aaron. The construct phrase le'einei ha'am ("to the eyes of the people") is an idiomatic way of saying the signs were performed visibly, in the people's presence.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text does not name a subject for vayya'as ("and he did"), leaving the referent grammatically tied to the last-mentioned subject, Aaron. The LXX (ἐποίησεν) and the Vulgate (fecit) preserve this same ambiguity, using only a third-person verb form without a subject noun. The BSB translation, however, explicitly inserts "Moses" as the subject of this clause ("Moses performed the signs"), which is not present as a named subject in the Hebrew, Greek, or Latin texts given here. Additionally, where the Hebrew names Yehovah (H3068G) as the one who spoke to Moses, the LXX renders this with ho theos ("the God") rather than a transliterated divine name.