Exodus 6:13

Summary

Yehovah speaks to Moses and Aaron and commands them concerning the Israelites and concerning Pharaoh, king of Egypt, with the purpose of bringing the Israelites out of the land of Egypt. The verse compresses two verbal actions — speaking and commanding — into a single narrative unit introducing further instructions.

Key words

• y'daBer ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative form; the intensive stem here marks solemn or authoritative speech, chained by the narrative vav to advance the story.
• y'tzaVem ("he commanded", H6680) — piel narrative verb with 3rd person masculine plural suffix -m ("them"), meaning "he commanded them," referring back to Moses and Aaron.
• 'el ("to", H0413) — preposition repeated four times in the verse, each time introducing a different target: Moses, Aaron, the sons of Israel, and Pharaoh.
• hoTzi' ("bring out", H3318H) — hiphil infinitive with prefixed le- ("to"), forming a purpose clause: causative action of "bringing out," here referring to the Israelites' removal from Egypt.
• b'nei ("[the] people of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct, appearing twice, linking "sons of" to "Israel" each time to form the fixed phrase "sons of Israel."

What the text says

The verse's syntax has two main verbs bound to Yehovah as subject: y'daBer ("he spoke," H1696G) directed 'el Moses and Aaron, followed by y'tzaVem ("he commanded them," H6680), whose 3mp suffix picks up Moses and Aaron as the ones commanded. The preposition 'el (H0413) then reappears twice more — 'el b'nei Yisra'el and ve'el Par'oh melekh Mitzrayim — marking the persons that the command concerns, though the same preposition was used moments earlier for the addressees themselves (Moses and Aaron). The Hebrew does not switch prepositions to distinguish "speaking to" from "commanding regarding," so the repeated 'el creates a chain of four prepositional phrases with the same grammatical form but different functional roles in translation.

The final clause is a purpose infinitive: le-hoTzi' ("to bring out," H3318H), a hiphil (causative) infinitive construct governed by the preposition le- (H9005), expressing the goal of the divine command — the causative removal of "the sons of Israel" (b'nei Yisra'el, H1121G/H3478) from "the land of Egypt" ('erets Mitzrayim, H0776G/H4714G), both phrases built as construct chains ("X of Y").

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the two Hebrew verbs (y'daBer, "he spoke"; y'tzaVem, "he commanded") with a single main verb, εἶπεν ("he said"), folding the command into one continuous statement introduced by πρὸς. The Vulgate preserves two actions but shifts the second: dedit mandatum ("he gave a command") rather than a direct verb "commanded," and renders the purpose clause with a subjunctive, ut educerent ("that they might bring out"), where the Hebrew uses an infinitive construct (le-hoTzi') rather than a finite subordinate verb.