Exodus 12:35

Summary

Exodus 12:35 states that the people of Israel acted according to the word of Moses and then asked the Egyptians for articles of silver, articles of gold, and clothing. The verse combines a statement of compliance with a narrated action that follows from it.

Key words

• asu ("they did", H6213A) — qal perfect, third person plural: a completed action, marking that the instruction was carried out in full before the next event begins.
• ki-dvar ("according to the word of", H9004 + H1697G) — preposition ki attached to the construct form dvar ("word of"), linking the people's action directly to something Moses had spoken, without naming the content of the word itself in this verse.
• vayish'alu ("and they asked", H7592) — verb in the narrative (vav-consecutive) form, which chains this action sequentially to the previous one: first they did, then they asked.
• keley khesef / keley zahav ("articles of silver" / "articles of gold", H3627 + H3701G / H2091) — construct chains where keley ("articles of") is repeated before each material, treating silver and gold objects as two separate categories rather than a single combined group.
• sematot ("clothes", H8071) — feminine plural noun, added as a third item after the two metal categories, joined simply by the conjunction u ("and", H9002).

What the text says

The verse opens with u-vene Yisra'El ("and the people of Israel"), using the construct form bene ("people of", H1121G) to identify the subject as belonging to Israel. The main clause uses asu ("they did"), a qal perfect verb indicating a completed, simple action — the carrying out of ki-dvar Mosheh ("according to the word of Moses"). This clause states compliance but does not itself specify what that word contained; the content is assumed from earlier context.

The second clause shifts to vayish'alu ("and they asked"), a narrative verb form that Biblical Hebrew uses to advance a story sequentially. This grammatical shift signals that the asking is presented as a distinct, following event, not a restatement of what "the word of Moses" was. The objects requested are listed through three construct or coordinated nouns: keley khesef ("articles of silver"), u-khley zahav ("and articles of gold"), and u-sematot ("and clothes"). The repetition of keley ("articles of") before both "silver" and "gold" keeps these as parallel, separate categories, while "clothes" is added without a repeated classifying noun, joined only by the conjunction u.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ki-dvar Mosheh ("according to the word of Moses") as καθὰ συνέταξεν αὐτοῖς Μωυσῆς ("as Moses commanded them"), making explicit an imperative sense not morphologically marked in the Hebrew noun dvar ("word of", H1697G). The Vulgate's sicut præceperat Moyses ("as Moses had instructed") similarly interprets dvar as an instruction rather than a neutral "word." For sematot ("clothes", H8071), the Vulgate adds plurimam ("very much/abundant"), an intensifying element not present in the Hebrew plural noun itself.