Exodus 6:9
וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה כֵּן אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְלֹא שָֽׁמְעוּ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָֽׁה׃ פ
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר מֹשֶׁ֛ה כֵּ֖ן אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֹ֤א שָֽׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה׃ פ
ἐλάλησεν δὲ Μωυσῆς οὕτως τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰσραήλ· καὶ οὐκ εἰσήκουσαν Μωυσῇ ἀπὸ καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων τῶν σκληρῶν.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Narravit ergo Moyses omnia filiis Israël: qui non acquieverunt ei propter angustiam spiritus, et opus durissimum.
Moisés les comunicó todo esto a los hijos de Israel, pero ellos no le hicieron caso, porque estaban muy desanimados por culpa de la cruel esclavitud.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
De esta manera habló Moisés á los hijos de Israel: mas ellos no escuchaban á Moisés á causa de la congoja de espíritu, y de la dura servidumbre.
Moses relayed this message to the Israelites, but on account of their broken spirit and cruel bondage, they did not listen to him.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Moses reports the divine message to the Israelites, but they do not listen to him. The verse attributes their unresponsiveness to two causes: qotser ruach ("shortness of spirit/breath") and avodah qashah ("hard labor").
Key words
- va-yedabber ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative form, indicating an intensive or emphatic act of speaking, chaining the verse to the preceding narrative.
- ken ("thus", H3651C) — adverb pointing back to a specific content of speech already established, i.e., Moses spoke in this manner.
- lo shame'u ("they did not listen", H3808 + H8085G) — qal perfect, a completed negative action; the verb shama covers both "hearing" and "heeding/obeying".
- qotser ("shortness of", H7115) — construct-state noun, grammatically bound to ruach, forming the fixed expression "shortness of spirit/breath".
- ruach ("spirit", H7307G) — feminine singular noun; here paired with qotser to denote a state of impatience, discouragement, or breathlessness.
What the text says
The sentence opens with va-yedabber... ken, a narrative construction stating that Moses spoke "thus" to the bene Yisra'el ("sons/people of Israel", H1121G construct + H3478), referring back to content already reported earlier in the chapter rather than restating it. The clause is short and does not specify what was said, relying on ken to carry that weight grammatically.
The second half of the verse is joined by ve-lo ("and not"), introducing the qal perfect shame'u, "they listened/heeded" — negated to mark a completed failure to respond, not an ongoing process. The reason clause follows with two parallel construct phrases introduced by the preposition min ("from"): mi-qotser ruach ("from shortness of spirit") and u-me-avodah qashah ("and from hard labor"). Both phrases use min in a causal sense ("because of," "on account of"), and the parallel construct-noun structure (qotser + ruach; implicit noun + avodah + qashah) balances an internal/psychological cause against an external/physical one.
Differences between versions
The LXX (Swete text) shows a visible gap: "ἀπὸ καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων τῶν σκληρῶν" ("from and from the hard works") lacks a rendering corresponding to qotser ruach, leaving only the equivalent of avodah qashah, "the hard works."
The Vulgate renders qotser ruach as angustiam spiritus ("anguish/narrowness of spirit"), a term emphasizing distress rather than the Hebrew's more literal sense of "shortness" or "breathlessness" tied to ruach.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.