Leviticus 23:33

Summary

This verse is a short introductory formula stating that Yehovah spoke to Moses. It contains no narrative content of its own but serves as the frame introducing the divine speech that follows.

Key words

va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel verb in the narrative (vav-consecutive) form, marking sequential action ("and then he spoke"); the piel stem here has an intensive or simply declarative nuance, standard for divine speech formulas.

Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — proper name functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb y'daBer.

mo.Sheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, object of the preposition 'el ("to", H0413), indicating the recipient of the speech.

Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, preceded by the preposition le ("to", H9005); together le-Mor introduces the content of the speech that follows, functioning much like an English colon plus "saying."

What the text says

The verse follows the standard Hebrew formula for introducing divine speech: verb + subject + prepositional phrase + infinitive of quotation. The narrative vav on va-y'daBer links this verse to the preceding material as the next event in sequence, while the piel stem of daBer ("to speak", H1696G) is the normal stem used for this verb in the Hebrew Bible and does not carry unusual emphasis beyond the standard sense of speaking or declaring.

The syntactic chain 'el-mo.Sheh ("to Moses") identifies the addressee, and the closing infinitive le-Mor ("saying") opens the quotation that will follow in subsequent verses. This construction — verb of speech + addressee + infinitive of quotation — is a fixed formula used repeatedly in Leviticus to introduce legal or ritual instructions, and its brevity here reflects its purely introductory function rather than any narrative development.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew le-Mor ("saying") is rendered in the LXX by the participle legōn ("saying") and in the Vulgate by the present participle dicens ("saying"), both matching the Hebrew infinitive's function of introducing the quoted speech. The Spanish SBLIBRE splits this into two verbs, "le habló... y le dijo" ("he spoke to him and said to him"), doubling the verbal action where the Hebrew and other versions use a single verb of speech plus an infinitive of quotation. The BSB renders va-y'daBer as "said" rather than a more literal "spoke," a lexical choice that does not affect the grammatical structure of the verse.