Numbers 9:1

Summary

The verse establishes a temporal and geographical setting: Yehovah speaks to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after the Israelites' departure from Egypt. It functions as an introductory formula preceding a divine instruction.

Key words

• y.da.Ber ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel verb in narrative form, marking the start of a new divine speech-act; the piel stem gives an intensive nuance to the act of speaking.
• mid.bar- ("wilderness of", H4057B) — masculine singular noun in construct state, linking directly to Si.nai, forming the place name "wilderness of Sinai."
• sha.Nah ("year", H8141) — feminine singular noun, paired with the ordinal she.Nit ("second", H8145) to specify the temporal marker "in the second year."
• tze.Ta ("going out", H3318G) — qal infinitive construct with the pronominal suffix m ("their," H9038), producing "in their going out" — a compact way of expressing "since they went out," without a separate finite verb or subject pronoun.
• Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct functioning as a formulaic closing hinge, introducing the direct speech that follows the verse.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative construction va-y.da.Ber ("and he spoke"), placing Yehovah as subject and Moses as recipient via the preposition 'el- ("to"). The location is given through the construct chain mid.bar-Si.nai ("wilderness of Sinai"), where the first noun is grammatically bound to the proper name that follows.

The temporal clause is built with layered construct and prepositional phrases: ba-sha.Nah ha-she.Nit ("in the second year") is followed by le-tze.Tam me-'E.retz Mitz.Ra.yim ("at their going out from the land of Egypt"), using an infinitive construct with a pronominal suffix rather than a finite verb with an explicit subject — a common Hebrew strategy for expressing temporal clauses concisely. This is further specified by ba-cho.desh ha-ri.shon ("in the first month"). The verse closes with the infinitive le-'mor ("saying"), a standard formula that introduces the divine speech to follow, without conjugating for tense or person on its own.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew places the temporal markers (year, departure from Egypt, month) after naming the location (wilderness of Sinai), while the BSB reorders the English sentence to front the date ("In the first month of the second year...") before naming the location. The Hebrew infinitive construct le-tze.Tam ("in their going out") is rendered in the LXX with a genitive absolute participle (ἐξελθόντων αὐτῶν, "they having gone out"), and in the Vulgate with a finite clause (postquam egressi sunt, "after they had gone out") — both versions convert the Hebrew's compact infinitival construction into more explicit clausal forms in Greek and Latin.