Exodus 13:4

Summary

The verse states that "today," in the month called Abib, the people are departing (Egypt, in context). It marks a specific temporal note tying the exodus event to a named month.

Key words

• hai-yom ("the day", H9009 + H3117G) — the article plus noun functions adverbially, meaning "today," anchoring the statement in the present moment of speech.
• 'atem ("you", H0859D) — an independent personal pronoun (masculine plural), explicitly naming the subject even though the verb yotze'im already carries plural information; its presence adds emphasis on "you" as the ones going out.
• yotze'im ("[are] about to go out", H3318G) — a qal participle, masculine plural. Participles in Hebrew often express an action in progress or imminent, so this form conveys "you are going out / about to go out" rather than a simple past or future finite verb.
• chodesh ("month of", H2320G) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it is grammatically bound to the following word, forming the phrase "month of Abib."
• ha-'aviv ("the Abib", H9009 + H0024) — a title with the definite article, naming the specific month.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence has no main finite verb; it relies on the participle yotze'im ("going out") combined with the pronoun 'atem ("you") to form the predicate: "you [are] going out." This participial construction gives the sentence a present-continuous or imminent nuance — the action is framed as happening now or about to happen, rather than as a completed or simple future event marked by a finite verb form.

The phrase ha-yom ("the day") stands at the head of the sentence and functions adverbially as "today," setting the temporal frame before the subject and verb are introduced. The second clause, be-chodesh ha-'aviv ("in the month of the Abib"), uses the construct chain chodesh ha-'aviv — literally "month of the Abib" — to specify which month this "today" falls within. The construct noun chodesh cannot stand alone grammatically; it depends on the following term ha-'aviv to complete its meaning.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chodesh ha-'aviv ("month of the Abib") as μηνὶ τῶν νέων ("month of new things/new grain"), translating the name Abib by its agricultural sense rather than transliterating it as a proper month name. The Vulgate similarly renders it as mense novarum frugum ("month of new crops"), following the same interpretive approach as the LXX. The Hebrew text itself simply uses 'aviv as a name (H0024) without semantic explanation, while both Greek and Latin versions convert it into a descriptive phrase about new produce.