Exodus 5:21

Summary

The Israelite foremen confront Moses and Aaron, invoking a curse-like appeal to Yehovah to look upon them and judge them. They accuse Moses and Aaron of making their reputation "stink" before Pharaoh and his officials, effectively placing a weapon in enemy hands to have them killed.

Key words

• yare ("may he look", H7200) — qal jussive; expresses a wish/imprecation directed at Yehovah, not a simple narrative statement.
• yishpot ("may he judge", H8199) — imperfect with vav, continuing the jussive force begun by yare; the two verbs form a parallel pair of appeals ("let him see... and let him judge").
• hiv'ashtem ("you have made stink", H0887) — hiphil (causative) perfect, 2nd person masculine plural; marks a completed action the foremen attribute directly to Moses and Aaron, using causative force ("you caused [our reputation] to become foul") rather than a passive description.
• reichenu ("our odor", H7381) — construct noun with 1st person plural suffix; construct form ties the noun to "us," expressing collective reputation figuratively as smell.
• leharegenu ("to kill us", H2026) — qal infinitive with 1st person plural suffix, governed by le-; expresses the intended purpose/result of the preceding action (placing a sword in hand).

What the text says

The sentence opens with two verbs in sequence — yare ("may he look") and ve-yishpot ("and may he judge") — both carrying jussive/volitive force directed at Yehovah (H3068), forming a formulaic double appeal for divine oversight and verdict. This is followed by a relative clause introduced by asher ("that/who", H0834), which supplies the grounds for the appeal: the hiphil perfect hiv'ashtem casts Moses and Aaron as agents who caused a result ("our odor," reichenu) to become offensive "in the eyes of" (construct einei, H5869) Pharaoh and his servants. The clause then moves to two parallel infinitive constructions with le- — latet ("to put", H5414) and leharegenu ("to kill us", H2026) — which express the purpose or outcome of the prior action: giving a sword into "their hand" (yadam, H3027 + suffix) so as to kill "us."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the double jussive of the Hebrew (yare...ve-yishpot) with a single optative, ἴδοι ὁ θεὸς ("may God see"), followed by ὅτι ("because") introducing the accusation, omitting a separate verb equivalent to yishpot ("judge"). The Vulgate preserves both verbs, videat... et judicet, matching the Hebrew structure more closely. Where the Hebrew has hiv'ashtem ("you have made stink"), the LXX uses ἐβδελύξατε ("you have made abominable/detestable"), a stronger term than the odor-based Hebrew idiom. The Hebrew be-yadam ("in their hand," plural) appears in the LXX as εἰς τὰς χεῖρας αὐτοῦ ("into his hand," singular), a difference in grammatical number between the two texts.