Numbers 8:23

Summary

The verse consists of the standard introductory formula marking the beginning of divine speech: Yehovah speaks to Moses. It contains no content of the speech itself, only the narrative frame that announces it.

Key words

• va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel verb in narrative form (vav-consecutive), indicating a completed, sequential action in the story: "and then he spoke."
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — proper name functioning as the grammatical subject of the verb.
• el- ("to", H0413) — preposition marking the addressee, directing the speech toward Moses.
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, direct object of the preposition, the recipient of the speech.
• leMor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, used here as a formulaic marker that introduces the content of what follows; it does not carry independent tense but signals "in the act of saying."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows the typical verb-subject-object word order common in narrative prose: va-y'daBer ("and he spoke") comes first, followed by the subject Yehovah, then the prepositional phrase el-Mosheh ("to Moses"), and finally the infinitive leMor ("saying"). This order places emphasis on the action of speaking as the narrative pivot, with the vav-consecutive form on y'daBer tying this verse into the sequence of prior narrated events — it presents the speech as the next event in a chain, not an isolated statement.

The infinitive leMor ("saying") is a common formulaic device in Biblical Hebrew narrative that opens direct speech; it does not add semantic content beyond signaling that quoted words follow. The piel stem of daBer ("to speak") is the standard stem used for this verb throughout the Hebrew Bible for reported speech, and it does not by itself indicate intensity of the speech act beyond the normal lexical sense of "to speak" in this stem.

Differences between versions

The Greek (LXX) and Latin (Vulgate) both render the formula with equivalent grammatical structures: ἐλάλησεν Κύριος πρὸς Μωυσῆν λέγων and Locutusque est Dominus ad Moysen, dicens, respectively. Both preserve the verb-subject-preposition-participle/infinitive pattern found in the Hebrew, with no substantive divergence in meaning. The Spanish (RV1909, SBLIBRE) and English (BSB) translations likewise reproduce the same formulaic order without variation in content.