Exodus 5:1

Summary

The verse narrates that Moses and Aaron came before Pharaoh and delivered a message from Yehovah, the God of Israel, demanding that Pharaoh release the Israelite people so they could hold a festival to him in the wilderness. The report combines narrative action (their arrival and speech) with direct quoted divine speech.

Key words

• 'achar ("after", H0310A) — introduces the temporal clause, situating this scene after prior unspecified events.
• ba'u ("they went/came", H0935G) — qal perfect, marking the arrival of Moses and Aaron as a completed action before the main narrative verb.
• shalach ("let go", H7971H) — piel imperative; the piel stem intensifies the sending/releasing action, functioning here as a direct command from Yehovah through his messengers.
• yachogu ("they may celebrate a festival", H2287) — qal imperfect with prefixed vav, expressing purpose or result following the imperative ("so that they may celebrate").
• 'ammi ("my people", H5971A + H9020) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, marking the people as belonging to Yehovah, the one issuing the demand.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a temporal marker, ve'achar ("and after"), followed by the perfect verb ba'u ("they came"), which sets up the scene before the narrative continues with the vav-consecutive verb yo'meru ("and they said"). This grammatical shift from perfect to vav-consecutive imperfect is typical of Hebrew narrative sequencing: the arrival is background, the speech act is the foregrounded event.

The quoted speech begins with the formula koh 'amar Yehovah ("thus says Yehovah"), a standard messenger formula, followed by the divine name in construct with 'Elohei Yisra'el ("God of Israel"). The command itself uses the piel imperative shalach, "let go" or "send away," attached to the object marker 'et before 'ammi ("my people"), showing the people are marked as Yehovah's possession through the first-person suffix. The purpose clause that follows, ve-yachogu li bammidbar ("so that they may celebrate to me in the wilderness"), uses the imperfect with vav to express the intended result of the release: a festival directed toward Yehovah (li, "to me") located specifically bammidbar, "in the wilderness."

Differences between versions

The Septuagint text as given opens with "καὶ Ἀαρὼν πρὸς Φαραὼ" ("and Aaron to Pharaoh"), naming only Aaron, whereas the Hebrew explicitly names both Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) and 'Aharon ("Aaron", H0175) as going to Pharaoh.

In the divine title, the LXX reads "κύριος ὁ Ἰσραήλ" ("the Lord, [of] Israel"), lacking an equivalent for 'Elohei ("God of", H0430G), while the Hebrew and Vulgate both preserve "Deus Israël" / 'Elohei Yisra'el, "God of Israel."

For yachogu ("they may celebrate a festival", H2287), the Vulgate renders "sacrificet" ("that he may sacrifice"), narrowing the broader Hebrew sense of holding a festival (related to chag, "feast") to the specific act of sacrifice.