Numbers 7:4

Summary

This short verse is a narrative formula introducing divine speech: it states that Yehovah spoke to Moses. It contains no content of the speech itself, only the introductory frame that precedes it.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal verb in the narrative (vav-consecutive) form, marking a sequential past action: "and then he said."
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the proper name of the deity, functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb.
• el ("to", H0413) — preposition indicating the addressee/direction of the speech, here pointing to Moses.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, the recipient of the speech, grammatical object of the preposition.
• le-mor ("saying", H0559) — the same root as va-yomer, but in infinitive form with prefixed preposition le ("to/for"), functioning as a formulaic marker that introduces direct speech to follow.

What the text says

The verse follows a fixed narrative pattern common in the Hebrew Bible for introducing divine communication: subject + verb of speech + preposition + addressee + infinitive of the same speech-verb. The construction va-yomer...le-mor ("and he said...saying") uses the same root (H0559) twice — once as a finite narrative verb and once as an infinitive construct — which is a standard Hebrew way of framing a quotation. This doubling has no equivalent single-word translation in English or Spanish; both target languages typically render it with just one verb ("said," "habló") plus a participle or gerund ("saying," "diciendo") to mark that direct speech follows.

The syntax is entirely formulaic: subject (Yehovah) — verb (va-yomer) — prepositional phrase indicating recipient (el-Mosheh) — infinitive marker (le-mor) opening a quotation. The verse itself carries no semantic content beyond establishing that a speech act occurred and identifying its speaker and addressee; the substance of what is said follows in subsequent verses.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew repeats the root H0559 twice (va-yomer... le-mor), a construction that all three cited versions (LXX, Vulgate, and the modern translations) compress into a single reported-speech marker. The LXX uses eipen... legōn ("he said... saying"), preserving the double-verb structure closest to the Hebrew. The Vulgate uses only Ait ("he said"), with no second verb corresponding to le-mor. The Spanish RV1909 and SBLIBRE, like the Vulgate, use a single main verb ("habló," "dijo") followed by "diciendo" ("saying"), similarly compressing the Hebrew's double occurrence of the root into one verb plus a participle.