Exodus 8:20

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to rise early and confront Pharaoh at the water's edge, delivering a divine message demanding the release of the Israelite people. The command culminates in a stated purpose: that the people may serve Yehovah.

Key words

• hashKem ("rise early", H7925) — hiphil (causative) imperative, giving the action of rising an intensified, purposeful causative sense: "cause yourself to rise early."
• hityaTzev ("present yourself", H3320) — hithpael (reflexive) imperative, denoting Moses positioning himself deliberately, not merely standing.
• shaLach ("let go", H7971) — piel (intensive) imperative, the core demand verb carrying an intensive/causative nuance of "sending away" or "releasing."
• ya'avDuni ("they may serve me", H5647) — qal imperfect with vav, expressing purpose or consequence ("so that they may serve"), with the 1st-person suffix -ni ("me") attached directly to the verb.
• amarTa ("you will say", H0559) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain of commands as a further instruction to Moses after the two imperatives.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on yomer ("and he said", H0559), the standard formula introducing divine speech to Moses. The instructions to Moses are given through a chain of two imperatives — hashKem ("rise early") and hityaTzev ("present yourself") — both grammatically marked forms (hiphil and hithpael respectively) that intensify or reflexivize the basic action, contributing more specificity than a plain command would.

The scene is set with hinneh ("there!", H2009) followed by the participle yotze' ("going out", H3318), a construction that in Hebrew narrative marks a vivid, ongoing action — Pharaoh is depicted as being in the process of going out to the water, not merely as a future event. The directional he suffix on hamMayemah ("toward the water") reinforces the motion toward that location.

The sequential perfect amarTa ("you will say") continues the chain of commands, followed by the messenger formula koh amar Yehovah ("thus says Yehovah"), which introduces the actual content of the divine message. The message itself pairs the piel imperative shallach ("let go/send away") with the purpose clause introduced by the imperfect-with-vav ya'avduni ("so that they may serve me") — grammatically marking the release of the people as the means toward the stated goal of service to Yehovah, with the object marked directly via the pronominal suffix -ni ("me") on the verb itself.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew participle construction (hinneh yotze' hammayemah, "there, he is going out to the water") with a future-tense verb, ἐξελεύσεται ("he will go out"), shifting the vivid present-participle nuance of the Hebrew into a straightforward future prediction. The Vulgate similarly uses egredietur ("he will go out"), a future form, matching the LXX's temporal shift away from the Hebrew's participial immediacy.