Leviticus 4:1

Summary

Leviticus 4:1 is a brief narrative formula introducing a new divine speech. It states that Yehovah spoke to Moses, opening the section that follows with legal instructions.

Key words

• va ("and", H9001) — narrative vav prefixed to the verb, marking this as the next event in a sequential chain of speeches within the book.
• y.da.Ber ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel (intensive stem) verb, third person masculine singular, narrative form; the piel stem here conveys the act of speaking/declaring rather than a simple utterance.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name, functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb.
• mo.Sheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, object of the preposition 'el ("to", H0413), marking him as the recipient of the speech.
• Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, prefixed with le ("to", H9005); this infinitive construction introduces the direct discourse that follows the formula.

What the text says

The verse follows a fixed syntactic pattern common in the legal sections of the text: [narrative vav] + [verb "to speak"] + [subject "Yehovah"] + [preposition "to"] + [recipient "Moses"] + [infinitive "saying"]. The narrative vav on y.da.Ber signals continuity with prior material, presenting this speech as the next event in sequence rather than an isolated statement.

The verb y.da.Ber is in the piel stem, an intensive verbal pattern in Biblical Hebrew grammar. This stem is the standard one used for this particular verb root when describing formal, direct communication, distinct from other verbs of speaking. The construction Mor, a qal infinitive prefixed with the preposition le, functions here as a formulaic marker that opens direct speech — grammatically it means something like "in saying" or "as follows," serving purely to introduce the quoted material that begins in verse 2.

The preposition 'el ("to", H0413) establishes directionality — the speech moves from Yehovah toward Moses, marking Moses as recipient rather than co-speaker. No content of the speech itself appears in this verse; it functions solely as an introductory formula.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew va-y.da.Ber ("and he spoke") is rendered by the LXX as ἐλάλησεν ("he spoke," aorist, without a coordinating "and" translated separately since Καὶ serves that role) and by the Vulgate as Locutusque est ("and he spoke," using the enclitic -que for "and"). The English BSB drops the initial conjunction and inserts "Then," while the Spanish SBLIBRE renders the phrase as "Yehová le dijo a Moisés" ("Yehovah said to him, to Moses"), adding an indirect object pronoun ("le") not present as a separate word in the Hebrew text, where mo.Sheh alone follows the preposition 'el.