Numbers 31:1

Summary

The verse opens a new divine speech: Yehovah addresses Moses directly. It is a short introductory formula that precedes the instructions that follow in the chapter.

Key words

• va-yedaBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel verb with narrative vav, marking a new sequential event in the story and giving the verb an intensive nuance ("to speak" emphatically or officially).
• YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name, functioning as the subject of the verb.
• 'el ("to", H0413) — preposition indicating the addressee of the speech.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, the recipient of the address.
• leMor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, introducing the content of what is spoken; grammatically it functions like a colon before direct or reported speech.

What the text says

The sentence follows a fixed formulaic pattern common in narrative introductions of divine speech: verb + subject + prepositional phrase + infinitive marker. The narrative vav on va-yedaBer ("and he spoke") signals continuity with the preceding narrative, situating this speech as the next event in sequence rather than an isolated statement. The piel stem of dabar (H1696G) is the form regularly used for formal or authoritative speech, distinguishing it from a lighter or casual utterance.

The prepositional phrase 'el-Mosheh ("to Moses") identifies the addressee explicitly, and the infinitive leMor ("saying") functions structurally to open the reported speech that follows in the subsequent verses. This is a standard formula appearing repeatedly in the Pentateuch to introduce divine legal or instructional material; the grammar itself carries no content beyond establishing speaker, addressee, and the transition into direct discourse.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew va-yedaBer ("and he spoke") is rendered in the LXX as ἐλάλησεν ("he spoke"), matching the verbal sense closely, and in the Vulgate as locutusque est ("and he spoke"), also using a perfect passive periphrastic construction with -que to mark narrative continuation similar to the Hebrew vav. The infinitive leMor ("saying") appears in the LXX as the participle λέγων ("saying") and in the Vulgate as dicens ("saying"), both functioning equivalently to introduce direct speech, though grammatically they are participles rather than infinitives as in the Hebrew. The BSB translation "said" condenses the two Hebrew elements y'daBer and leMor into a single English verb, not preserving the separate infinitival marker found in the source text.