Numbers 35:9

Summary

This verse is a brief narrative formula stating that Yehovah spoke to Moses. It introduces a divine speech that follows, functioning purely as a transitional marker rather than conveying content itself.

Key words

• va ("and", H9001) — the narrative vav prefixed to the verb, linking this statement to the preceding text as the next event in sequence.
• yedaBer ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel stem of the verb "to speak," conveying an intensive or communicative act; the piel form is regularly used for authoritative or formal speech rather than casual utterance.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine name, functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, the recipient of the speech, marked by the preposition 'el ("to", H0413).
• Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, attached to the preposition le ("to/for", H9005), forming the standard formula leMor ("saying") that opens direct speech.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows a fixed syntactic pattern common in narrative sections of the Torah: verb–subject–prepositional phrase–infinitive. The verb yedaBer ("he spoke", H1696G) opens the clause, preceded by the narrative vav (va, H9001), which signals continuation of a sequence of reported events. The subject, Yehovah (H3068G), follows the verb — a normal verb-subject order in Biblical Hebrew narrative style.

The phrase 'el-Mosheh ("to Moses", H0413 + H4872) identifies the recipient using the preposition 'el, indicating directional address ("to" or "toward"). The final element, leMor ("saying", H9005 + H0559), is a fixed infinitival construction that Biblical Hebrew regularly uses to introduce direct discourse; it does not add independent semantic content beyond marking that quoted speech follows. This entire verse thus functions as an introductory formula, structurally identical to many others in the Torah that precede divine instructions.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (Ait Dominus ad Moysen) omits an equivalent for leMor ("saying", H0559), rendering the clause more concisely as "The Lord said to Moses," without the additional infinitive marking direct speech. The Hebrew, LXX (λέγων, "saying"), and modern translations like BSB and SBLIBRE preserve this element in some form, either as a participle ("saying") or through added phrasing ("and said to him").