Leviticus 8:1

Summary

Leviticus 8:1 is a brief narrative formula that introduces a new divine speech. It states that Yehovah spoke to Moses, opening the section that follows with instructions (not contained in this verse itself).

Key words

• va ("and", H9001) — narrative vav prefixed to the verb, marking the sequential opening of a new narrative unit ("and then...").
• y'daBer ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel stem of the verb, third person masculine singular, in the narrative (wayyiqtol) form; the piel here carries the basic sense "to speak" as an intensive/factitive stem of the root.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine name, functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb.
• 'el- ("to", H0413) — preposition marking Moses as the addressee/recipient of the speech.
• Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, used adverbially to introduce direct speech that follows ("saying" = introducing quoted words).

What the text says

The verse follows the standard Hebrew narrative pattern for introducing divine speech: a wayyiqtol verb (va-y'daBer) placing the action in sequence with what precedes, the subject Yehovah, the prepositional phrase 'el-Mosheh naming the recipient, and the infinitive leMor ("saying") which functions as a formal marker opening direct discourse. This four-part structure (verb–subject–addressee–quotation marker) is a fixed formula that recurs throughout Leviticus to introduce legal or ritual instructions.

The infinitive Mor does not carry independent tense; its grammatical role is purely to signal that a quotation follows. In Hebrew narrative, this construction allows the verb of speaking to be separated from the content of the speech by the addressee phrase, a pattern not fully replicated by translations that simply render it as "saying" or omit it as a colon-marker before quoted material.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew va-y'daBer ("and he spoke") is rendered in the LXX as elalēsen ("he spoke"), dropping the explicit narrative vav's sequential force into a simple aorist introduced by kai ("and"). The Vulgate's Locutusque est similarly uses a perfect tense with an enclitic -que ("and"), achieving a comparable sequential sense through different morvphological means. The BSB renders the opening as "Then the LORD said," using "Then" to capture the narrative sequence instead of "and," while the SBLIBRE splits the single verb y'daBer into two Spanish verbs ("le habló... y le dijo"), a stylistic expansion not present in the Hebrew's single verb plus infinitive construction.