Leviticus 6:1

Summary

The verse records a short narrative formula: Yehovah speaks to Moses, introducing a divine instruction. It contains no content of the message itself, only the introductory formula that marks the beginning of new legislative speech.

Key words

va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel stem verb with narrative vav, marking sequential narrative action ("and then he spoke"); the piel here is the standard intensive-stem form used for this verb in narrative speech-introduction formulas.

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

'el ("to", H0413) — preposition marking Moses as the addressee/recipient of the speech.

Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, direct object of the preposition 'el, identifying the human recipient.

leMor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed le-, functioning adverbially to introduce direct or reported speech that follows ("in saying" / "as follows").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows a fixed syntactic pattern common to legislative sections of the text: verb–subject–prepositional phrase–infinitive. The narrative vav prefixed to y'daBer links this verse to the preceding material as a continuation of the narrative sequence, while the piel stem of daBer is simply the verb's regular stem for "to speak" in this formula, not necessarily marking unusual intensity.

The infinitive leMor ("saying", H0559) is a grammatical device rather than a content word — it functions as a hinge that opens the following discourse, signaling that direct speech is about to be quoted. This construction places the divine name YHWH as the sole grammatical subject, with Mosheh marked by the preposition 'el ("to") as the passive recipient, establishing the directional flow of communication from Yehovah to Moses without any verb of motion or additional descriptive elements. The sentence itself carries no theological or narrative content beyond identifying speaker, addressee, and the fact that speech is about to occur.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders the sequence with ἐλάλησεν κύριος πρὸς Μωυσῆν λέγων, matching the Hebrew word order and using a participle (λέγων, "saying") for leMor rather than an infinitive, a common Greek equivalence. The Vulgate's Locutus est Dominus ad Moysen, dicens likewise uses a participle (dicens) for the same function. The SBLIBRE Spanish version splits the formula into two coordinated verbs ("le habló... y le dijo," "spoke to him and said to him"), effectively doubling the single Hebrew verb-plus-infinitive construction into two finite verbs, a stylistic expansion not present in the Hebrew syntax.