Leviticus 22:26

Summary

Leviticus 22:26 is a brief narrative formula introducing a divine speech: Yehovah addresses Moses, opening a new set of instructions. The verse itself contains no legal or ritual content — it functions purely as an introductory frame.

Key words

• va-y.da.Ber ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel verb with narrative vav, indicating a completed, sequential action in the story: "and then he spoke." The piel stem here is typical of the verb "to speak" and does not necessarily imply intensity beyond the normal usage of this root.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name, functioning as the subject of the verb.
• 'el- ("to", H0413) — preposition marking the addressee of the speech, directing the action toward Moses.
• mo.Sheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, the human recipient of the divine speech.
• le.-Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition le, forming the standard idiom "saying" that introduces direct discourse to follow.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows a fixed syntactic pattern common in Leviticus and other legal/narrative sections of the Pentateuch: verb + subject + prepositional phrase + infinitive of speech. The narrative vav attached to y.da.Ber ("and he spoke") signals continuity with what precedes, marking this as the next link in a chain of divine communications rather than an isolated statement. The subject Yehovah immediately follows the verb, which is standard Hebrew verb-subject word order in narrative prose.

The phrase 'el-mo.Sheh ("to Moses") specifies the addressee using the preposition 'el, indicating directionality — the speech is directed toward Moses as recipient, not simply about him. The final element, le.-Mor ("saying"), is an infinitive construct that functions as a quotation marker, grammatically opening the door to the direct speech that follows this verse. This construction — va-y.da.Ber Yehovah 'el-X le.-Mor — is a recurring formula throughout Leviticus, and its grammar here shows no unusual features: it is the standard introductory pattern for divine legislation.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-y.da.Ber with ἐλάλησεν ("he spoke"), matching the Hebrew narrative verb, and translates le.-Mor as λέγων ("saying"), a participle rather than an infinitive, which is the LXX's regular equivalent for this Hebrew construction. The Vulgate similarly uses locutusque est ("and he spoke") and dicens ("saying"), a participle paralleling the Greek. These are structural translation choices reflecting differences between Hebrew infinitive and Greek/Latin participial usage, not divergences in meaning.