| 19. Linguistic Exegesis The verse begins with the infinitive construct bihyotkhem {בִּֽהְיֽוֹתְכֶם | bə-hih-yō-ṯə-ḵem} functioning adverbially as a temporal clause “when you were.” The construct chain metei mispar {מְתֵ֣י מִסְפָּ֔ר | mə-ṯē mis-pār} “men of number” denotes a small, countable population. The prepositional phrase kim'at {כִּמְעַ֖ט | kimmə-ʿaṭ} intensifies fewness, while the conjunction vegarim {וְגָרִים | wə-gārîm} “and sojourners” introduces their status as resident aliens. The pronoun suffix in bah {בָּֽהּ | bāh} “in it” ties the description to the land context. English expresses the temporal infinitive construct as a subordinate clause with “when,” preserving Hebrew parallelism and word order in a coordinate series of descriptors. |