Exodus 5:17

Summary

Pharaoh answers Moses and Aaron by accusing them of being idle, repeating the accusation twice, and then quotes their own request back to them as proof of their laziness: their wish to go and sacrifice to Yehovah.

Key words

• nirpim ("idle", H7503) — niphal participle, masculine plural, repeated twice (words 3 and 5) for emphasis; describes a state resulting from an action done to the subject ("made idle" / "being idle").
• 'atem ("you", H0859D) — masculine plural personal pronoun, also repeated (words 4 and 8), reinforcing the direct address to Moses and Aaron.
• 'al-ken ("therefore", H5921A + H3651C) — a preposition plus adverb forming a fixed causal connector, introducing Pharaoh's conclusion from the accusation of idleness.
• 'omerim ("saying", H0559) — qal participle, masculine plural, framing the quoted speech that follows as an ongoing or habitual statement attributed to the workers.
• nelekhah ("let us go", H1980G) and nizbechah ("let us sacrifice", H2076) — both glossed as verbal forms expressing intention ("to do/in doing"), functioning together as the content of what "you are saying."

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative marker va attached to yomer ("he said", H0559), continuing the story sequence. Pharaoh's reply has no separate object; his response fills the verse. The doubling of nirpim ("idle") across positions 3 and 5, both times paired with 'atem ("you"), creates a rhetorical repetition: "Idle — you are idle." This structure places the accusation twice before any connector appears, giving the statement an emphatic, almost mocking cadence in Hebrew that a single translation of "idle" may flatten.

The causal particle 'al-ken ("therefore") then links the accusation to Pharaoh's interpretation of their words: because they are idle, they say nelekhah nizbechah la-YHWH — "let us go, let us sacrifice to Yehovah." The two verbal forms nelekhah and nizbechah are placed side by side without a conjunction, giving the quoted request a compact, self-contained rhythm: going and sacrificing are presented as a single intended action rather than two separate steps.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the double accusation as σχολάζετε ("be idle," a verb) followed by σχολασταί ἐστε ("you are idle ones," a noun phrase), using two different grammatical forms rather than repeating the same word as the Hebrew does with nirpim twice. The Vulgate condenses this into a single idiomatic expression, "Vacatis otio" ("you are empty with idleness"), without repeating the accusation. Additionally, where the Hebrew names YHWH (H3068G) as the object of the sacrifice, the LXX reads τῷ θεῷ ἡμῶν ("to our God"), diverging from the Hebrew's use of the divine name, while the Vulgate's "Domino" ("to the Lord") corresponds more closely to the Hebrew designation.