Exodus 4:6

Summary

Yehovah commands Moses a second time (od, "again", H5750) to put his hand into his garment. Moses obeys, and when he withdraws his hand it has become leprous, compared to snow.

Key words

• od ("again", H5750) — marks this as a repeated action; Yehovah had already instructed Moses once (with the staff-to-serpent sign), and this word signals a second demonstration.
• have ("put/bring", H0935, hiphil imperative) — the causative stem turns the basic verb "to come/enter" into "cause to enter," i.e., "make [your hand] go in." The particle na ("please", H4994) softens the imperative into a request.
• chelqekha / cheyqo ("your bosom" / "his bosom", H2436) — a construct-form noun referring to the fold of the garment against the chest, repeated with different pronominal suffixes (-kha "your", -o "his") as the narrative shifts from command to execution.
• yotzi'ah ("he brought it out", H3318, hiphil narrative) — again a causative form, this time of the verb "to go out," describing Moses' act of withdrawing the hand.
• metzora'at ("leprous", H6879, pual passive participle, feminine construct) — a passive/intensive form indicating the hand (grammatically feminine, yad) has been made or found afflicted; the participle functions predicatively describing the resulting state.

What the text says

The verse is built as a tight narrative chain using the vav-consecutive form (va-yomer, va-yave, va-yotzi'ah), each verb marked "and then he said / and then he put / and then he brought out." This chain moves the action forward in discrete steps: command, compliance, result. The imperative have na ("put, please") is directed at Moses, using the hiphil stem of bo to express "cause [your hand] to enter," paired with the possessive noun phrase yadekha be-cheyqekha ("your hand in your bosom/garment-fold").

The repetition of yad... be-cheyq... (hand ... in bosom) across three clauses — Yehovah's command, Moses' action, and the withdrawal — creates a symmetrical structure in the Hebrew that is somewhat compressed in translation. The final clause introduces hinneh ("behold/there!", H2009), an interjection that draws attention to the sudden discovery, followed by the description of the hand as metzora'at ka-shaleg — a passive participle ("leprous") compared with a preposition of likeness (ka-, "like") to shaleg ("snow", H7950). The feminine grammatical agreement of metzora'at matches yad ("hand"), which is grammatically feminine in Hebrew, not a comment on gender otherwise.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders od ("again") as πάλιν, matching the Hebrew's repetition marker, which the Vulgate also reflects with rursum ("again"). The LXX and Vulgate both smooth the Hebrew's repeated yad...be-cheyq phrasing: the LXX uses χεῖρα/κόλπον consistently, while the Vulgate uses manum/sinum, preserving the parallel structure but without the emphatic na ("please") present in the Hebrew imperative, which neither the LXX nor Vulgate render with a separate word.