Numbers 4:21

Summary

The verse opens a new divine speech unit with the standard narrative formula: Yehovah speaks to Moses. It contains no independent content beyond announcing that a communication is about to follow.

Key words

• va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel form of the root dbr, prefixed with the narrative vav (H9001); the piel stem here carries the basic sense of authoritative or emphatic speech, and the prefixed vav marks this as a sequential narrative event ("and then he spoke").
• YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name, functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb.
• 'el ("to", H0413) — preposition marking the addressee, introducing Mosheh.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, object of the preposition, the recipient of the speech.
• le-'mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition le (H9005), functioning adverbially to introduce the direct speech that follows; literally "to say" or "in saying."

What the text says

The clause follows the fixed pattern found throughout Numbers and Leviticus for introducing divine legal or ritual speech: verb–subject–prepositional phrase–infinitive marker. The verb y'daBer precedes its subject YHWH, which is normal word order in Biblical Hebrew narrative (verb-subject-object), not emphatic inversion. The piel stem of dbr is the form regularly used for formal speech acts, in contrast to the qal stem used for the verb "to say" ('amar) that closes the formula.

The infinitive le-'mor does not introduce new information; grammatically it functions as a linking device, signaling that direct speech follows the formula, without specifying tense or subject on its own — the subject is understood from context (Yehovah). This construction is why English and Spanish translations render it as "saying" or "diciendo," even though the infinitive itself carries no independent finite verbal force. The whole verse is a transitional formula rather than a statement with independent theological or narrative content — it exists to frame the instructions that follow in the chapter.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-y'daBer with elalēsen ("he spoke," aorist active) and le-'mor with the participle legōn ("saying"), which is a fairly literal structural match to the Hebrew. The Vulgate similarly uses locutusque est ("and he spoke") plus dicens ("saying"), preserving the same formulaic sequence. Modern translations such as the BSB drop the equivalent of le-'mor altogether, rendering the whole clause simply as "the LORD said to Moses," collapsing the two-part Hebrew formula (finite verb + infinitive) into a single reported-speech verb.