Exodus 40:1

Summary

Exodus 40:1 opens a new divine speech with a standard narrative formula: Yehovah speaks to Moses. The verse itself contains no content of the speech — it only introduces the direct discourse that follows in the subsequent verses.

Key words

• va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel stem with narrative vav; the piel here carries the sense of authoritative or formal speaking (as opposed to the simpler qal form of the same root), and the narrative vav links this speech-act to the preceding sequence of events.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name, functioning as the grammatical subject of y'daBer.
• 'el- ("to", H0413) — preposition marking Moses as the recipient/addressee of the speech.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper noun, direct object of the preposition, identifying the human party in the exchange.
• leMor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct (formed with prefixed le-), functioning as a formulaic marker that introduces the direct quotation to follow; literally "to say/in saying."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows the common verb-subject-object order typical of narrative vav-consecutive constructions: va-y'daBer ("and he spoke") + Yehovah (subject) + 'el-Mosheh ("to Moses") + leMor ("saying"). This is a fixed formula used throughout the Pentateuch to introduce divine speech; the infinitive leMor does not add new information but signals that direct discourse is about to begin. The verse itself is purely introductory — it establishes who speaks (Yehovah), to whom (Moses), and that a quotation follows, without yet stating its content. The piel form of daBer ("to speak", H1696G) is the standard stem used for this verb throughout the Hebrew Bible when introducing formal or authoritative speech, distinguishing it from the qal form of the same root, which carries a different semantic range.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (ἐλάλησεν Κύριος πρὸς Μωυσῆν λέγων) and the Vulgate (Locutusque est Dominus ad Moysen, dicens) both render the Hebrew formula closely, preserving the verb-subject-preposition-object-participle structure. The Vulgate uses dicens ("saying"), a present participle, corresponding to the Hebrew infinitive leMor ("saying", H0559). English and Spanish translations given (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) render the formula idiomatically — BSB drops the explicit "saying" and instead moves directly to reported speech ("Then the LORD said to Moses"), while RV1909 and SBLIBRE retain a form of "diciendo/dijo" corresponding to leMor. These are stylistic adaptations rather than substantive divergences in meaning.