Exodus 5:19

Summary

The verse reports that the foremen of the Israelites recognized their own difficult situation after being told that the daily brick quota could not be reduced. The sentence combines a perception verb with a quoted command that echoes the order given earlier in the chapter.

Key words

• va-yir'u ("and they saw", H7200G) — qal narrative verb, plural, continuing the story sequence; here it carries the sense of "perceiving" or "realizing" a situation rather than simple physical sight.
• shoterei ("foremen of", H7860) — qal participle, construct plural; describes the foremen as those who "oversee" or "keep order," attached to benei Yisra'el ("sons of Israel").
• ra' ("trouble/evil", H7451B) — masculine singular adjective, functioning here as a noun after the preposition be- ("in"), giving the sense "in a bad [situation]."
• tigre'u ("you will diminish", H1639) — qal imperfect, second person plural, expressing an ongoing prohibition: "you shall not reduce."
• devar-yom be-yomo ("a matter of a day in its day", H1697I + H3117J + H3117G) — a construct chain meaning "the matter/quota of each day on its (own) day," i.e., a fixed daily amount.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative va-yir'u ("and they saw," H7200G), followed by the subject shoterei benei Yisra'el ("the foremen of the sons of Israel," H7860 + H1121G + H3478), then the direct object marker 'otam ("themselves," H0853+H9038). The construction "they saw themselves in ra'" (H7451B) uses the preposition be- to indicate a state — literally "in trouble/evil" — a Hebrew idiom for recognizing one's own dire condition, rather than seeing an external object.

The verb le-mor ("saying," H0559 infinitive) introduces reported speech, marking the following words as a quotation of what the foremen were told. That quotation reproduces the prohibition lo-tigre'u ("you will not diminish," H3808 + H1639), followed by mi-livneikhem ("from your bricks," H9006+H3843+H9026) and the phrase devar-yom be-yomo (H1697I+H3117J+H9003+H3117G), a construct expression meaning a fixed quota assigned per day.

The Hebrew syntax places the foremen's perception (va-yir'u...be-ra') before the content of the command they received, structuring the verse as: recognition of trouble, followed by the specific words that caused it.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-yir'u...'otam be-ra' ("they saw themselves in trouble") as ἑώρων ἑαυτοὺς ἐν κακοῖς ("they were seeing themselves in evils"), using a plural noun for "evils" instead of the Hebrew singular adjective ra' (H7451B). The Vulgate's Videbantque se... in malo keeps the singular "in evil," closer to the Hebrew form. For the quoted prohibition, the LXX phrases it as οὐκ ἀπολείψετε τῆς πλινθίας τὸ καθῆκον τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ("you shall not leave off the due amount of brick-making for the day"), which restructures the Hebrew's tigre'u ("diminish," H1639) and the construct phrase devar-yom be-yomo into a different syntactic arrangement, though preserving the sense of a daily fixed quota.