Leviticus 24:13

Summary

The verse is a short narrative formula stating that Yehovah spoke to Moses. It introduces direct speech that follows in the surrounding context, functioning as a standard transitional marker in the legal material of Leviticus.

Key words

• va-yedaBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel verb with narrative vav; the piel stem carries an intensive nuance, and the vav-consecutive form places this action as the next event in the narrative sequence.
• YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine name, functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb yedaBer.
• 'el ("to", H0413) — preposition marking Moses as the recipient/addressee of the speech.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper noun, indirect object of the verb, governed by the preposition 'el.
• leMor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition le; this construction conventionally opens direct quoted speech, signaling that what follows is the content of what was spoken.

What the text says

The Hebrew clause follows a fixed syntactic pattern common in narrative and legal sections of the Pentateuch: verb (va-yedaBer) + subject (YHWH) + prepositional phrase ('el-Mosheh) + infinitive marker (leMor). The verb yedaBer is in the piel stem, which in this root (H1696G, "to speak") is the standard stem used for verbal communication — it does not necessarily imply added intensity in usage, but grammatically it is the piel form regularly paired with the narrative vav to advance the story.

The infinitive leMor ("saying", H0559) does not add new semantic content beyond marking the transition to direct speech; its grammatical role is to open a quotation, functioning similarly to a colon in English. The clause itself contains no content of the speech — it only establishes the speaker (YHWH), the addressee (Mosheh), and the act of speaking, with the actual message following after this formula in the surrounding verses.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text names the subject explicitly as YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068G). The LXX renders this with κύριος ("Lord"), a substitution of the divine name with a title. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) omits an explicit subject noun altogether, using only the relative "Qui" ("who"), which grammatically refers back to a subject introduced earlier in the Latin text rather than restating the divine name. The BSB and RV1909 restore "the LORD"/"Jehová" as the subject, aligning more closely with the Hebrew's explicit naming.