Medabber is the Piel participle of the verb d-b-r, the same root as davar. Where davar is the spoken word as noun, the thing that has been said and now stands as event, medabber is the act of speaking caught in motion. Hebrew participles do work English participles do not. They hold the moment open. They refuse the finished tense.

This is the form that shows up at Sinai. V'YHWH medabber el-kol-q'halchem, and YHWH was speaking to all your assembly (Deuteronomy 5:22). Not spoke. Not delivered. Speaking. To the whole people, at once, with no human in the seam. The participle is doing the load-bearing work in the sentence, because the participle says the speech is not a one-time event safely stored in the past. HaShem is the speaking-One, ongoing, present-tense, addressing the assembly directly.

The translations turn medabber into a clean past tense and the moment closes. The reader gets a finished speech and a class of approved interpreters who will explain what was once said. The Hebrew refuses that. He is medabber. Sinai is the architectural template, not the historical artifact. The directness the participle holds open is the directness the rest of the system has been working overtime to convert into a settled past tense ever since.