Numbers 2:1

Summary

The verse introduces a new divine communication, stating that Yehovah spoke to Moses and Aaron. It is a standard formulaic opening used to mark the beginning of a legal or instructional speech in the narrative.

Key words

• va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative verb form; the piel stem gives an intensive or declarative nuance to "speaking," and the narrative vav links this act directly to the ongoing sequence of divine communications in Numbers.
• YHVH ("Yehovah", H3068G) — proper name functioning as the grammatical subject; identifies the speaker without a descriptive title.
• 'el-Mosheh ("to Moses", H4872) — proper name preceded by the preposition 'el ("to", H0413), marking Moses as one recipient of the speech.
• ve'el-'Aharon ("and to Aaron", H0175) — proper name preceded by the same preposition and conjunction ve ("and", H9002), adding Aaron as a second, joint recipient.
• leMor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with the prefix le- ("to", H9005); introduces the content of the speech that follows the formula.

What the text says

The verse follows a fixed syntactic pattern common in the legal sections of Numbers: verb + subject + prepositional recipients + infinitive marker introducing quoted speech. The verb y'daBer ("he spoke", H1696G) opens the sentence and carries the narrative vav, which signals continuation from a prior episode rather than an isolated event. The subject YHVH ("Yehovah", H3068G) follows immediately, a typical Hebrew verb-subject order for narrative prose.

The two recipients, Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) and 'Aharon ("Aaron", H0175), are each introduced by the preposition 'el ("to", H0413), and joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002). This repetition of the preposition before each name (rather than a single preposition governing both) gives grammatical parity to Moses and Aaron as joint addressees of the speech, though Moses is named first.

The closing element, leMor ("saying", H0559), is an infinitive construct that functions as a quotation marker, opening the door to the direct speech that follows in the subsequent verses. This construction is formulaic throughout the Pentateuch and does not by itself indicate the content of what is said.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Ἀαρὼν λέγων) and Vulgate (Aaron, dicens) both render the phrase with a single conjunction joining Moses and Aaron, followed by a participle ("saying") rather than reproducing the Hebrew's repeated preposition 'el before each name. This slightly reduces the syntactic emphasis on Aaron as an independently marked recipient that the Hebrew preserves through its double prepositional phrase.