Numbers 34:1

Summary

Numbers 34:1 is a short introductory formula stating that Yehovah spoke to Moses. It contains no narrative content of its own but serves as the opening frame for the divine speech that follows in the subsequent verses.

Key words

• va ("and", H9001) — narrative vav prefixed to the verb, marking this as a new segment in the ongoing narrative sequence ("and then...").
• y.da.Ber ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel (intensive) stem verb, third person masculine, narrative form; the piel stem here conveys the act of speaking as a deliberate, communicative act rather than a mere utterance.
• Yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068G) — proper name functioning as the subject of the verb, identifying the speaker.
• mo.Sheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, object of the preposition 'el ("to", H0413), identifying the recipient of the speech.
• Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, prefixed with le ("to", H9005), forming the standard formula that introduces direct speech ("saying" / "to say").

What the text says

The verse follows a fixed syntactic pattern common in the Torah for introducing divine legal or instructional speech: narrative vav + verb (y.da.Ber) + subject (Yah.weh) + prepositional phrase indicating the recipient ('el-mo.Sheh) + infinitive construct (le.Mor). The verb y.da.Ber is in the piel stem, which in this construction is the standard causative-intensive form used for the verb "to speak" when Yehovah addresses Moses; it does not imply repeated or forceful speech beyond the ordinary meaning "to speak" in this idiom.

The infinitive le.Mor ("to say" / "saying") functions grammatically as a subordinate marker that opens direct discourse — it signals to the reader that what follows are the exact words spoken, in this case the instructions concerning the boundaries of the land that begin in verse 2. The verse itself contains no content beyond this introductory formula: subject, verb, recipient, and speech-marker.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (LXXSWETE) as transmitted here shows the participle λέγων ("saying") duplicated (λέγων λέγων), which does not correspond to any doubling in the Hebrew le.Mor ("saying", H0559); the Hebrew has only one instance of this infinitive. The Vulgate (dicens) and the Hebrew both present a single speech-marker, matching the expected single occurrence.