Exodus 6:29

Summary

Yehovah speaks to Moses, identifying himself with the self-declaration 'ani Yehovah ("I [am] Yehovah", H0589/H3068G), and commands him to speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, everything that Yehovah is speaking to him. The verse restates and continues a command previously given, framed as direct divine speech reported through narrative.

Key words

• va-y.daBer ("and he spoke", H9001/H1696G) — narrative vav + piel verb; piel here marks intensive/formal speech, and the narrative form advances the storyline ("and then he spoke").
• le.Mor ("saying", H9005/H0559) — qal infinitive construct introducing direct discourse; standard formula opening a quoted speech.
• 'aNi ("I", H0589) — independent personal pronoun, appearing twice (once with Yehovah, once with doVer); its use is grammatically emphatic since Hebrew verbs already encode person, so its presence highlights the subject "I" both times.
• daBer ("speak", H1696G) — piel imperative, second masculine singular; a direct command form, distinct from the earlier y.daBer (narrative) and doVer (participle) built on the same root.
• doVer ("speaking", H1696G) — qal participle, masculine singular; expresses ongoing/durative action ("the one who is speaking"), describing Yehovah's speech to Moses as a continuing act rather than a single completed utterance.

What the text says

The verse opens with a narrative frame: va-y.daBer Yehovah 'el-moSheh le.Mor ("and Yehovah spoke to Moses, saying"), a standard formula introducing reported speech. Within the quoted speech, the self-identification 'aNi Yehovah ("I [am] Yehovah") appears without a copula, as is typical in Hebrew nominal clauses — the pronoun and the name stand juxtaposed, and the "am" is supplied by the grammatical structure rather than an explicit verb.

The core instruction uses the imperative daBer ("speak") built on the same root (H1696G) as the earlier narrative verb, but in a different binyan function: the narrative verb y.daBer reports past speech, while the imperative daBer commands a future speech act toward par'Oh Melekh mitzRayim ("Pharaoh, king of Egypt") — a construct phrase where Melekh ("king of") governs mitzRayim ("Egypt"). The object of what Moses must say is marked by 'et (direct object marker, untransatable) before kol-'aSher ("all that"), introducing a relative clause. Within that clause, the participle doVer ("[am] speaking") — again from the root daBer — presents Yehovah's communication to Moses as an ongoing action, contrasting with the imperative form addressed to Pharaoh. The repetition of the same verbal root in three different grammatical forms (narrative y.daBer, imperative daBer, participle doVer) is a feature of the Hebrew text not necessarily preserved in translation, since English and Greek/Latin renderings use distinct lexical choices ("spoke," "tell," "say") rather than repeating one root.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening narrative clause with καὶ ελάλησεν κύριος πρὸς Μωυσῆν λέγων, matching the Hebrew formula closely. However, for the final clause, where the Hebrew has the participle doVer ("I am speaking") governing a relative clause 'et kol-'aSher ("all that"), the LXX gives καὶ ἐγὼ λέγω πρὸς σέ ("and I say to you"), restructured as a separate clause rather than an embedded relative construction. The Vulgate's loquere ad Pharaonem... omnia quae ego loquor tibi preserves the relative-clause structure more closely to the Hebrew syntax, using loquor ("I speak") for the participial idea.