Numbers 15:1

Summary

Numbers 15:1 opens a new divine speech unit with the standard narrative formula: Yehovah speaks to Moses. The verse contains no content of the speech itself, only the introduction that marks a new legal or instructional section beginning.

Key words

• va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel stem verb with narrative vav, marking sequential action in the story; the piel form is often used for authoritative or formal speech in Biblical Hebrew.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine name functioning as the subject of the verb, given without a title or epithet here.
• 'el ("to", H0413) — preposition indicating the addressee of the speech, directing the action toward Moses.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, the recipient of the divine communication.
• leMor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, functioning as a formulaic marker that introduces direct speech to follow; literally "to say" but used idiomatically to open quoted content.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows a fixed syntactic pattern common throughout the Pentateuch: verb–subject–prepositional phrase–infinitive marker. The verb y'daBer ("he spoke", H1696G) opens the clause, preceded by the narrative vav (H9001), which links this verse to the preceding textual unit and signals a new sequential event in the narrative flow. The subject Yehovah (H3068G) follows immediately, then the prepositional phrase 'el-Mosheh ("to Moses") identifies the addressee.

The final element, leMor (H0559), is an infinitive construct built from the root "to say" ('amar). Its grammatical function here is not to add new semantic content but to serve as a discourse marker opening the quotation that follows in the next verses. This construction — verb of speaking followed by leMor — is a recurring formula in Hebrew narrative and legal material, and it has no separate lexical translation in most target languages; it is typically rendered simply as "saying" or left implicit before a colon, as seen in the English and Spanish versions provided.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders y'daBer ("he spoke", H1696G, piel) with εἶπεν ("he said"), a simple aorist form, rather than a verb specifically marking intensive or formal speech. The Vulgate's Locutus est ("has spoken") uses a perfect passive deponent construction, differing grammatically from both the Hebrew narrative verb form and the Greek aorist, though all three convey the same basic event of Yehovah addressing Moses.