Exodus 14:27

Summary

Moses stretches his hand over the sea, and at the turn of morning the sea returns to its normal condition while the Egyptians are fleeing toward it. Yehovah shakes Egypt off into the middle of the sea.

Key words

• yad ("hand", H3027) — construct noun with pronominal suffix -o ("his"), forming "his hand," the instrument of Moses' gesture.
• yashov ("it returned", H7725) — qal narrative verb (vav-consecutive), marking the sea's action as the next event in the sequence, parallel to Moses' stretching.
• eitano ("its normal [state]", H0386) — adjective in construct with suffix -o, describing the sea's return to its prior, stable condition (literally "to its perennial/steady state").
• qerato ("to meet it/him", H7122) — infinitive construct with suffix -o, expressing the direction or purpose of the Egyptians' flight: they flee "toward a meeting with it."
• na'er ("he shook off", H5287) — piel (intensive) narrative verb, describing Yehovah's forceful action of shaking Egypt off/away, more intensive than a simple qal verb would convey.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs: va-yet ("and he stretched out"), va-yashov ("and it returned"), and va-yena'er ("and he shook off"), which sequence the actions of Moses, the sea, and Yehovah respectively. The subject of the second clause is ha-yam ("the sea", H3220), which "returns" le-fanot boqer ("at the turning of morning") le-eitano ("to its normal state") — a phrase built from the construct noun eitan with a possessive suffix, indicating the sea resumes its own prior, steady condition rather than being described only as calm or full.

The phrase u-mitzrayim nasim liqrato ("and Egypt were fleeing to meet it") uses a participle (nasim, H5127) for ongoing action ("were fleeing") combined with an infinitive construct (qerato) that has a third-person suffix. The suffix's antecedent is grammatically ambiguous in the Hebrew — it could refer back to "the sea" (ha-yam) or be read more loosely as "toward each other" — a nuance that translations resolve differently. The final clause returns to Yehovah as subject, using the piel verb yena'er ("he shook off"), an intensive stem that pictures a forceful, decisive action of dislodging Egypt be-tokh ha-yam ("in the middle of the sea"), using the construct noun tokh ("middle of").

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the ambiguous liqrato clause as "fugientibusque Aegyptiis occurrerunt aquae" ("and as the Egyptians fled, the waters met/rushed upon them"), making the waters the grammatical subject of the encounter. The LXX instead states the Egyptians "fled under the water" (ἔφυγον ὑπὸ τὸ ὕδωρ), a different spatial framing than the Hebrew's "fleeing to meet it." The LXX also renders yena'er ("he shook off") with ἐξετίναξεν ("shook out/off"), preserving the shaking image, while the Vulgate uses "involvit" ("he enveloped/wrapped"), a different verb emphasizing engulfment rather than shaking.