Exodus 6:2

Summary

Exodus 6:2 opens a new divine speech: Elohim speaks to Moses and then declares his identity through the self-presentation formula ani Yehovah, "I [am] Yehovah." The verse uses two consecutive verbs of speech before the actual content of what is said, a structure typical of solemn divine pronouncements.

Key words

• va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative form, intensive verbal stem, indicating a deliberate or emphatic act of speaking, distinct from simple speech.
• Elohim ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun functioning as the subject; here it is the grammatical agent of the speaking verb.
• va-yYomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal narrative form, the standard simple verb "to say," introducing the direct quotation that follows.
• ani ("I", H0589) — independent personal pronoun, first person singular, placed before the divine name to form an emphatic self-declaration.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name, appearing here without a verb "to be," which is implied.

What the text says

The verse contains two narrative verbs in sequence: va-y'daBer ("and he spoke") and va-yYomer ("and he said"), both introduced by the narrative vav (H9001) that chains this clause to the preceding text. This double verb construction — first stating that speech occurred, then introducing its actual content — is a recurring pattern in Biblical Hebrew narrative that marks the beginning of a formal or significant utterance. The subject of both verbs is Elohim (H0430G), a grammatically plural noun taking singular verb agreement, as is standard for this term when referring to a single deity in the Hebrew text.

The core declaration, ani Yehovah, consists only of the pronoun ani ("I") and the proper name Yehovah, with no explicit copula ("am") in the Hebrew. The verb "to be" is grammatically absent and supplied by translators. This construction places identity, expressed through the divine name, immediately after the emphatic pronoun, without additional predicate or descriptive elements in the Hebrew text itself.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text uses the plural noun Elohim as the subject, while the Vulgate renders the subject as Dominus ("the Lord") rather than a term corresponding to "God." The LXX instead uses ho theos ("God"), matching the Hebrew Elohim semantically. In the closing self-declaration, the Hebrew Yehovah (the divine proper name) is rendered as kyrios ("Lord") in the LXX and as Dominus ("Lord") in the Vulgate, both substituting a title for the name found in the Hebrew consonantal text.