Exodus 5:6

Summary

The verse reports that on that same day Pharaoh gave a command to two groups of officials over the Israelite laborers: the nogesim ("taskmasters", H5065) and the shoterim ("foremen", H7860). The sentence introduces the direct speech that follows in verses 7-9.

Key words

• va-yeTzav — "and he commanded" (H6680): piel verb in narrative form, marking a sequential action ("and then he commanded"); the piel stem gives the verb an intensive or causative nuance, "to give an order/charge."
• ha-nogeSim — "the taskmasters" (H5065): qal active participle, masculine plural, with article. As a participle it describes them functionally — "the ones who press/drive" — rather than by a fixed title.
• shoteRav — "his foremen" (H7860): qal active participle, masculine plural, construct form with pronominal suffix "his" (referring to Pharaoh). Also a participle describing an ongoing function, "the ones who record/officiate," here possessed by Pharaoh.
• ba-Yom ha-Hu — "on that day" (H3117 + H1931): preposition + noun + article + demonstrative pronoun, forming the temporal phrase "in the day, the that one" = "on that same day."
• le-Mor — "saying" (H0559): qal infinitive construct with preposition le, the standard formula introducing direct speech that follows.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative verb va-yeTzav ("and he commanded"), followed immediately by its subject Par'oh ("Pharaoh"). This word order — verb before subject — is typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative sequence, marking a new action following from what precedes. The temporal phrase ba-yom ha-hu ("on that day") is inserted before the object, anchoring the command to a specific point in the story rather than describing habitual action.

The object of the command is doubled by two direct object markers ('et', H0853, untranslated), each introducing one class of officials: ha-nogesim ("the taskmasters") and shotarav ("his foremen"). Both are grammatically participles (qal active), not nouns with fixed lexical meaning — they describe people by what they do (pressing/driving, and recording/overseeing) rather than by an institutional title. The phrase closes with le-mor ("saying"), the standard Hebrew infinitive construction that introduces the reported speech given in the following verses.

Differences between versions

The LXX (συνέταξεν δὲ Φαραὼ) omits an explicit rendering of "on that day" (ba-yom ha-hu) found in the Hebrew, moving directly to naming the officials. The Vulgate restores this temporal note ("in die illo") but places it differently in the sentence, attaching it to "praecepit" before naming the officials. Both the LXX (τοῖς ἐργοδιώκταις, "to the task-drivers") and Vulgate (praefectis operum, "the overseers of works") render ha-nogesim with terms emphasizing supervisory authority, while the Hebrew participle more literally denotes "the ones who press/drive."