| 1. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with the vav-consecutive wayyiqtol forms vayis’u {וַיִּסְעוּ | way-yîṣ‘û} ‘and they set out’ and vayavo’u {וַיָּבֹאוּ | way-yā-bō-’û} ‘and they came’, establishing a sequential travel narrative. The construct chain kol-adat benei-yisrael employs particle kol and stacked modifiers to highlight corporate identity. The prepositional clause el-midbar-sin {אֶל־מִדְבַּר־סִין | ʾel mid-bār sîn} ‘to the wilderness of Sin’ emphasizes location, while the relative clause introduced by asher {אֲשֶׁר | ’ă-šer} ‘which’ and paired prepositions bein-eilim u-vein-sinai {בֵּין־אֵילִם וּבֵין סִינָי | bēn-’ê-lîm û-bēn sî-nāy} frame precise geography. Temporal reference is marked by the phrase bachamisha asar yom {בַּחֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר יוֹם | ba-ḥă-mî-ššāh ‘ā-śār yôm} ‘on the fifteenth day’ and the infinitive construct letsetam {לְצֵאתָם | lə-ṣê-’ā-tām} ‘after their going out’, linking back to mitsrayim {מִצְרַיִם | mits-rā-yim} ‘Egypt’. In translation, the wayyiqtol verbs become English past tense, construct chains are smoothed into noun phrases, and the Hebrew dating formula is preserved to reflect its temporal precision. |