Exodus 14:2

Summary

Moses is commanded to tell the Israelites to turn back and camp near Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, facing Baal-zephon. The verse specifies the precise location where the camp is to be set, by the sea.

Key words

• daBer ("speak", H1696) — piel imperative, an intensive command form directed at "you" (masculine singular, presumably Moses).
• yaShuvu ("they may turn back", H7725) — qal imperfect with a prefixed vav, expressing purpose or sequence following the command: "so that they turn back."
• yachaNu ("they may encamp", H2583) — qal imperfect with vav, third person plural, continuing the same purpose clause as yaShuvu.
• nikhCho ("opposite it", H5227) — construct form with a third-person pronominal suffix -o ("it/his"), referring back to Baal-zephon.
• tachaNu ("you will encamp", H2583) — qal imperfect, second person plural, the same root as yachaNu but shifting grammatical person.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the piel imperative daBer ("speak") addressed to a singular "you," followed by the object el-beNei Yisra'El ("to the sons of Israel"). What follows is a purpose or result clause introduced by the conjunction ve- attached to two verbs in sequence: yaShuvu ("they may turn back") and yachaNu ("they may encamp"), both third-person plural qal imperfects. This construction reports the content of what Moses is to tell the people using indirect, third-person verb forms rather than a direct quotation.

The location is given through a chain of construct phrases using li-fNei ("before/to the face of," H6440) twice — first placing the camp "before Pi-hahiroth" and second "before Baal-zephon" — plus the paired preposition bein...uvein ("between...and," H0996) marking the space between Migdol and the sea. The suffix on nikhCho ("opposite it," H5227 + H9033) ties the following clause back to Baal-zephon, specifying that the camp lies directly opposite it.

A notable grammatical shift occurs at the end: after two verbs in third-person plural (yaShuvu, yachaNu, referring to "they," the Israelites), the final verb tachaNu ("you will encamp") switches to second-person plural. The Hebrew text thus moves from describing what "they" (the people) will do to a direct address in second person, without any explicit marker signaling the change of addressee.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders pi haChirot not as a transliterated proper name but as τῆς ἐπαύλεως ("the encampment/farmstead"), differing from the Hebrew proper name Pi-haChirot (H6367) and from the Vulgate's Phihahiroth, which preserves it as a place name. The LXX also renders Ba'al-tzeFon as a single compound, Βεελσεπφών, matching the Hebrew's two-word proper name Ba'al + tzeFon (H1189) treated as one term.