Exodus 6:10

Summary

This short verse marks a narrative transition, stating simply that Yehovah spoke to Moses. It introduces direct speech that follows, functioning as a formulaic introduction to divine communication.

Key words

• va-yedaBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel verb with narrative vav, marking sequential action in the story; the piel stem here carries an intensive or communicative nuance beyond a simple utterance.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name, functioning as the subject of the verb.
• el- ("to", H0413) — preposition marking the recipient of the speech, directing the action toward Moses.
• moSheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, the addressee of the divine speech.
• leMor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, introducing the forthcoming direct discourse; this infinitival form is a standard formula that opens quoted speech in narrative Hebrew.

What the text says

The verse follows a fixed syntactic pattern common in narrative Hebrew: verb + subject + prepositional phrase + infinitive of introduction. The sequence va-yedaBer... leMor ("and he spoke... saying") is a formulaic construction that Biblical Hebrew uses repeatedly to introduce reported speech. The narrative vav prefixed to yedaBer signals continuity with the preceding narrative, indicating that this speech act follows directly from what came before in the sequence of events.

The verb yedaBer is in the piel stem, which in this root often carries a factitive or intensive sense compared to the qal, though in this common formulaic usage it functions simply as "to speak" in a way that qal cannot for this particular root — the qal of the same root is not used to express verbal communication in this manner. The subject Yehovah is placed immediately after the verb, following typical verb-subject word order in Hebrew narrative clauses. The preposition el- ("to") establishes the directional relationship between speaker and addressee, while leMor is a qal infinitive construct that syntactically opens the following quotation, without itself specifying tense — it depends on the finite verb yedaBer for its temporal placement in the narrative.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text places the divine name Yehovah explicitly as the subject after the verb va-yedaBer. The LXX renders this with κύριος ("Lord"), following its regular practice of substituting "Lord" for the Hebrew divine name, and uses δὲ ("but/then") rather than a direct equivalent of the narrative vav. The Vulgate's Dominus similarly renders the divine name as "Lord." The English BSB uses "LORD" in capitals to signal the underlying Hebrew Yehovah, while the Spanish SBLIBRE renders it directly as "Yehová," preserving the proper name as in the Hebrew source text.