Exodus 7:8

Summary

Exodus 7:8 is a short narrative formula introducing direct speech: Yehovah addresses both Moses and Aaron together, and the sentence closes with a construction that opens the quotation which follows.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal verb in the narrative (vav-consecutive) form; marks the next event in the story sequence and identifies a single male speaker.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — proper name of the speaker, functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb.
• 'el ("to", H0413) — preposition used twice (before Mosheh and before 'Aharon), marking each recipient of the speech separately.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) and 'Aharon ("Aaron", H0175) — proper names, both marked as addressees, joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002).
• le-mor ("saying", H0559) — infinitive construct of the same root as va-yomer, preceded by the preposition le ("to", H9005); this combination is the standard formula introducing quoted speech in Biblical Hebrew narrative.

What the text says

The verse consists of a single clause built around the verb va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), whose subject is Yehovah (H3068G). The verb is in the qal narrative form, which in Biblical Hebrew sequences one reported action after another rather than merely stating a fact in isolation. The addressees are introduced through two parallel prepositional phrases: 'el-Mosheh ("to Moses") and ve-'el-'Aharon ("and to Aaron"), each preceded by its own 'el ("to", H0413). This repetition of the preposition treats Moses and Aaron as two distinct targets of the speech rather than as a single combined entity, even though they are joined by ve ("and", H9002).

The clause ends with le-mor ("saying", H0559), an infinitive construct built from the same root as the main verb and introduced by the preposition le ("to", H9005). This va-yomer...le-mor pattern is a recurring formula in the narrative material of the Hebrew Bible: the finite verb reports that speech occurred, and the infinitive le-mor opens the door to the actual words that follow in the next verse. The verse itself contains no content of the speech — it is purely a framing or introductory clause.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew repeats the preposition 'el ("to", H0413) before both Moses and Aaron, producing two separate prepositional phrases. The LXX uses a single preposition, pros ("to"), governing "Moses" and placing "Aaron" without a repeated preposition, joined simply by kai ("and"). The Vulgate similarly uses one prepositional phrase, "ad Moysen et Aaron," without repeating "ad" before Aaron. This differs structurally from the Hebrew's twofold 'el... ve-'el..., though the resulting sense of both being addressees is the same across all three texts.