Exodus 12:6

Summary

The verse instructs that the animal (referred to earlier in the passage) is to be kept in safekeeping until the fourteenth day of the current month, at which point the entire assembly of the congregation of Israel will slaughter it, at the time called "between the two evenings."

Key words

mishMeret ("safekeeping", H4931) — feminine singular noun; combined with the preposition le ("for", H9005), it describes the purpose of keeping the animal: it is set aside for a period of guarding.

shachaTu ("they will slaughter", H7819A) — qal sequential perfect, third person plural; continues the narrative chain begun by haYah ("it will be", H1961), marking the next required action in sequence.

Kol ("all", H3605) and keHal ("assembly of", H6951) — both construct-state nouns, chained together with 'adat ("congregation of", H5712) to form a stacked construct phrase: "all [of the] assembly of [the] congregation of Israel."

'adYisraEl ("congregation of Israel", H5712 + H3478) — the final link in the construct chain, identifying the group performing the slaughter.

'arBayim ("two evenings", H6153) — masculine dual noun with the definite article ha; the dual form indicates a pair, here understood as marking a specific time span rather than a single evening.

What the text says

The verse opens with veHayah ("and it will be", H1961), a sequential perfect that continues a chain of instructions begun earlier in the chapter. This form, combined with the narrative vav, signals continuation of a legal or procedural sequence rather than a single isolated statement. The clause lachem lemishMeret ("for you, for safekeeping") uses two prepositional phrases stacked together, emphasizing both the addressees (plural "you") and the purpose (guarding) of the action.

The time reference 'ad 'arba'ah 'asar yom lachodesh hazeh ("until the fourteen day of this month") is built from the cardinal number 'arba'ah 'asar ("fourteen", H0702 + H6240), literally "four-teen," followed by yom ("day", H3117G) and the construct phrase lachodesh hazeh ("of this month").

The second clause, introduced by another sequential veshachatu ("and they will slaughter", H7819A), names the actor through a triple construct chain: kol qehal 'adat Yisra'el — literally "all of assembly of congregation of Israel." This stacking of construct nouns without intervening conjunctions is a feature of Hebrew that allows multiple nouns to modify each other in sequence, producing a single complex expression that translations render as "the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel."

The closing phrase bein ha'arbayim ("between the two evenings") uses a dual noun form, 'arbayim ("two evenings", H6153), which grammatically indicates a pair rather than a single unit, marking a bounded time period rather than one point in time.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew bein ha'arbayim ("between the two evenings") is rendered in the LXX as pros hesperan ("toward evening"), and in the Vulgate as ad vesperam ("toward evening"); both Greek and Latin versions use a singular evening reference, where the Hebrew employs the dual form 'arbayim. The BSB translates this as "at twilight," while SBLIBRE renders it "al atardecer" ("at dusk"), both collapsing the dual construction into a single time expression.