Exodus 4:31
וַֽיַּאֲמֵן הָעָם וַֽיִּשְׁמְעוּ כִּֽי־פָקַד יְהוָה אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְכִי רָאָה אֶת־עָנְיָם וַֽיִּקְּדוּ וַיִּֽשְׁתַּחֲוּֽוּ׃
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַֽיַּאֲמֵ֖ן הָעָ֑ם וַֽיִּשְׁמְע֡וּ כִּֽי־פָקַ֨ד יְהוָ֜ה אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל וְכִ֤י רָאָה֙ אֶת־עָנְיָ֔ם וַֽיִּקְּד֖וּ וַיִּֽשְׁתַּחֲוּֽוּ׃
καὶ ἐπίστευσεν ὁ λαός, καὶ ἐχάρη ὅτι ἐπεσκέψατο ὁ θεὸς τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ καὶ ὅτι εἶδεν αὐτῶν τὴν θλῖψιν· V
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
et credidit populus. Audieruntque quod visitasset Dominus filios Israël, et respexisset afflictionem illorum: et proni adoraverunt.
El pueblo creyó, y al escuchar que Yehová había venido a ver a los hijos de Israel y que había visto su sufrimiento, se inclinaron y adoraron.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y el pueblo creyó: y oyendo que Jehová había visitado los hijos de Israel, y que había visto su aflicción, inclináronse y adoraron.
and they believed. And when they heard that the LORD had attended to the Israelites and had seen their affliction, they bowed down and worshiped.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Exodus 4:31 reports that the people believed after hearing that Yehovah had taken note of the Israelites and had seen their affliction. The verse closes with two verbs of physical prostration marking the people's response.
Key words
- ya'amen ("it believed", H0539) — hiphil narrative form (vayiqtol chain), 3rd person, referring back to ha'am ("the people"); opens the sequence of events.
- yishme'u ("they heard", H8085) — qal narrative form, 3rd person plural, continuing the narrative chain begun by ya'amen.
- pakad ("he had observed/attended to", H6485) — qal perfect, not part of the narrative chain; the perfect aspect marks this as a completed action reported as content of what was heard, prior to the main narrative line.
- ra'ah ("he had seen", H7200) — qal perfect, parallel in form and function to pakad, introduced by the second ki clause.
- yiqedu ("they bowed low", H6915) and yishtachavu ("they bowed down", H7812) — both qal/hishtaphel narrative forms, 3rd person plural, placed in sequence as two distinct verbs describing the physical act of prostration.
What the text says
The verse is built as a chain of narrative (vayiqtol) verbs — ya'amen, yishme'u, yiqedu, yishtachavu — that carry the main storyline forward: believing, hearing, bowing low, bowing down. Embedded within this chain are two subordinate clauses introduced by ki ("that", H3588A), each containing a qal perfect verb (pakad, ra'ah) rather than a narrative form. This grammatical shift signals that the content of these clauses — Yehovah's attending to the Israelites and seeing their affliction — is presented as an already-completed situation, the report of which is what the people heard.
The double phrase bene Yisra'el ("[the] people of Israel", construct with H1121G + H3478) and 'onyam ("their affliction", H6040 + suffix H9028) both use the direct object marker 'et (H0853), confirming that Yehovah (Yehovah, H3068G) is the grammatical subject acting upon these two objects: the Israelites themselves and their affliction. The final pairing of yiqedu and yishtachavu uses two distinct roots for bowing placed back to back, without any coordinating explanation of difference in the Hebrew grammar itself — the text simply juxtaposes them in the same narrative chain.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders yishme'u ("they heard", H8085) as ἐχάρη ("rejoiced"), diverging from the Hebrew verb of hearing; the Vulgate's audierunt ("they heard") and Spanish/English translations follow the Hebrew sense instead. The LXX also renders Yehovah (H3068G) as ὁ θεός ("God"), where the Hebrew text and the Vulgate (Dominus) preserve reference to the divine name/title distinctly.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.