Numbers 10:13

Summary

The verse reports that the Israelites set out on their journey for the first time, in accordance with a command issued through Moses that is attributed to Yehovah. The sentence marks this departure as an initial event in a sequence and grounds its authority in a chain of transmission from Yehovah to Moses to the people.

Key words

• va-yis'u ("and they set out", H5265) — qal narrative verb form, marking a new event that follows sequentially from what precedes; the subject "they" is masculine plural, referring to the Israelites collectively.
• ba-rishonah ("at the first", H7223G) — feminine singular ordinal number with prefixed preposition and article, functioning adverbially to indicate this is the first instance of a repeated action (the sequence of the people's departures during the wilderness journey).
• pi ("mouth of", H6310I) — masculine singular construct noun, forming the idiom "mouth of Yehovah," which denotes a spoken command or utterance issuing from him.
• yad ("hand of", H3027J) — common gender singular construct noun, forming the idiom "hand of Moses," which denotes agency or mediation — Moses as the one through whom the command is transmitted or enacted.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, completing the construct chain "by the hand of Moses."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure is compact: a single main verb (va-yis'u, "and they set out") is followed by two prepositional phrases that qualify how and by whose authority the departure occurred. The first phrase, al-pi Yehovah ("upon the mouth of Yehovah"), uses the construct noun pi ("mouth of") to form an idiom meaning "according to the command of Yehovah" — literally invoking the image of Yehovah's mouth as the source of the instruction. The second phrase, be-yad Mosheh ("by the hand of Moses"), uses the construct noun yad ("hand of") similarly as an idiom for agency or mediation, indicating that Moses served as the means through which this command reached the people.

The ordinal ba-rishonah ("at the first") is adverbial, marking this specific departure as the first of what the surrounding narrative presents as a series of departures. The two idiomatic construct phrases ("mouth of Yehovah," "hand of Moses") together describe a two-stage chain: the command originates from Yehovah's "mouth" and is mediated through Moses' "hand," without the Hebrew specifying further mechanics of that mediation.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders al-pi Yehovah ("upon the mouth of Yehovah") as dia phōnēs kyriou ("through the voice of the Lord"), shifting the idiom from "mouth" to "voice" while preserving the sense of divine utterance. The Vulgate renders the same phrase as juxta imperium Domini ("according to the command of the Lord"), abandoning the body-part idiom entirely in favor of an abstract noun for "command." The Hebrew pi ("mouth of") is thus rendered by an anatomical-adjacent term in the LXX (phōnē, "voice") and by a non-anatomical abstraction in the Vulgate (imperium, "command").