| 35. Linguistic Exegesis The narrative begins with vayehi {וַיְהִי | wă-yĕ-hî} ‘and it happened’, a typical Hebrew opening for a pivotal event. The phrase ballailah hahu {בַּלַּיְלָה הַהוּא | bə-lăy-lāh ha-hûʾ} ‘in that night’ provides precise temporal setting. The clause vayetze malakh Yahweh {וַיֵּצֵא מַלְאָךְ יְהוָה | wă-yē-ṣēʾ malʾākh Yə-hō-wāh} ‘and the angel of the LORD went out’ foregrounds divine agency through verb–subject inversion. The verb vayakh {וַיַּךְ | wa-ya-ḵ} ‘and he struck’ introduces divine judgment within the prepositional phrase bemachaneh Ashur {בְּמַחֲנֵה אַשּׁוּר | bə-maḥă-nêh ʾă-shur} ‘in the camp of Assyria’. Hebrew numbers follow the additive-hectomultiplicative pattern meah šemoneem vaḥamishah alef {מֵאָה שְׁמוֹנִים וַחֲמִשָּׁה אָלֶף | mē-ʾāh še-mō-nîm wa-ḥă-mî-šāh ā-lep̄} ‘one hundred eighty-five thousand’, emphasizing scale. The sequence vayashkimu baboker vehineh {וַיַּשְׁכִּימוּ בַּבֹּקֶר וְהִנֵּה | wa-yaš-šĕ-qîmû ba-bō-qer wə-hin-nēh} ‘and they arose early in the morning, and behold’ sets up the climactic revelation kullam pgarim metim {כֻּלָּם פְּגָרִים מֵתִים | kul-lām pe-gā-rîm mē-tîm} ‘all of them corpses, dead’, using parataxis to heighten the impact. |