Exodus 12:37

Summary

The verse narrates the departure of the Israelites from Rameses toward Succoth, giving an approximate count of the men who traveled on foot — about six hundred thousand — explicitly excluding a separate category of persons, the taf ("little ones").

Key words

• va-yis'u ("and they set out", H5265) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the next event in the story sequence.
• benei ("[the] people of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct, linking directly to "Israel" as "the sons/people of Israel."
• ke ("about", H9004, prefixed to shesh-me'ot) — the preposition here functions as an approximator, signaling that the following number is not exact but estimated.
• ragli ("foot soldier[s]", H7273) — masculine singular adjective describing the mode of travel (on foot) of the counted men.
• taf ("little ones", H2945) — masculine singular noun denoting a group excluded from the count, joined to bad ("apart", H0905H) via le- and mi-.

What the text says

The clause opens with the narrative vav attached to va-yis'u ("and they set out", H5265), a standard way in Biblical Hebrew to advance the storyline. The subject is benei Yisra'el ("the people of Israel", H1121G + H3478), followed by two place names governed by prepositions: me-Ram'eses ("from Rameses", H7486G) and Sukkota ("to Succoth", H5523H), the final syllable of the second bearing a directional he (H9011) indicating "toward."

The numeral phrase ke-shesh-me'ot 'elef ragli uses the preposition ke (H9004) before the number, a construction that Biblical Hebrew regularly employs to mark approximation rather than precision — hence "about six hundred thousand" rather than an exact tally. The noun ragli (H7273), "foot soldier" or simply "on foot," qualifies ha-gevarim ("the men", H1397 with definite article H9009), specifying that this count refers to men traveling on foot.

The closing phrase le-vad mi-taf combines bad ("apart", H0905H) with the prepositions le- and mi- to form an idiom meaning "apart from" or "not counting," followed by taf (H2945), a term for dependents/little ones. Grammatically, only taf is named as excluded from the numeral; no other group is specified in the Hebrew text itself.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate's absque parvulis ("apart from the little ones") corresponds closely to the Hebrew le-vad mi-taf. The LXX (Swete) text given here, however, renders the passage without the numeral "six hundred thousand" present in the Hebrew, and closes with plēn tēs aposkeuēs ("besides the baggage/equipment"), a divergence from the Hebrew's taf ("little ones"). Modern translations such as BSB ("besides women and children") and SBLIBRE ("sin contar a las mujeres y a los niños") add "women" to the excluded group, a term not present in the single Hebrew word taf.