Leviticus 23:9

Summary

The verse records that Yehovah spoke to Moses, introducing a divine communication. It is a formulaic transition marking the start of new legal instructions.

Key words

• va-y.da.Ber ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel verb with narrative vav, presenting the action as the next event in the narrative sequence; the piel stem here carries the standard sense of speaking/declaring rather than a strictly intensive nuance.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name, serving as subject of the verb y.da.Ber.
• mo.Sheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, object of the preposition 'el- ("to", H0413), marking the recipient of the speech.
• Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, attached to the preposition le- (H9005), forming the standard formula that introduces direct speech to follow.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows a fixed formula found repeatedly in Leviticus and other legal material of the Pentateuch: subject-verb order with va-y.da.Ber placed first, establishing this as a narrative continuation ("and he spoke"). The subject Yehovah follows the verb, then the prepositional phrase 'el-mo.Sheh ("to Moses") identifies the addressee. The final element, le-mor ("saying"), is an infinitive construct with the preposition le-, which functions here not as a purpose clause but as a formulaic marker opening direct discourse — literally "to say" but functioning as "as follows" or "saying."

This construction contains no independent content of its own; its grammatical role is purely to frame what follows as reported divine speech directed at Moses. The piel form of daBer is the standard verb used for formal speech, particularly official or authoritative pronouncements, distinguishing it from simpler speech verbs. The infinitive mor at the end does not add new information but syntactically opens the quotation that will follow in the subsequent verses.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (ἐλάλησεν κύριος πρὸς Μωυσῆν λέγων) mirrors the Hebrew formula closely, using ἐλάλησεν ("he spoke") for y.da.Ber and λέγων ("saying") for le-mor. The Vulgate (Locutusque est Dominus ad Moysen, dicens) also follows the same structure, rendering le-mor as dicens ("saying"). Modern translations such as the BSB drop the infinitive altogether ("And the LORD said to Moses"), collapsing the two-verb formula (spoke... saying) into a single English verb, which is a simplification of the Hebrew's paratactic structure rather than a difference in meaning.