Exodus 14:29

Summary

The verse states that the people of Israel crossed the sea walking on dry ground, with the water forming a wall on their right and on their left. It functions as a summary restatement of the crossing already narrated earlier in the chapter, now emphasized in relation to the destruction of the Egyptians in the surrounding verses.

Key words

• bene ("sons/people of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct noun, linking to "Yisra'el" to form the phrase "the people of Israel."
• halekhu ("they walked", H1980I) — qal perfect, 3rd person plural: a completed action, "they walked/had walked," describing the crossing as a finished event.
• yabbashah ("dry ground", H3004) — feminine singular noun, preceded by preposition + article va ("in the"), specifying the surface on which they walked.
• tokh ("middle of", H8432) — masculine singular construct noun, forming "in the middle of the sea," locating the dry path within the sea itself.
• choma ("wall", H2346G) — feminine singular noun, used once but applied to both sides through the following prepositional phrases.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around the verb halekhu ("they walked", H1980I), a qal perfect that presents the crossing as a completed action. Because this verse restates an event already described earlier in the chapter, some translations render this perfect as a pluperfect ("had walked") to mark it as a recap rather than a new event in the narrative sequence — a nuance the Hebrew perfect form allows but does not grammatically require.

The phrase bete Yisra'el halekhu vayabbashah betokh hayam ("the people of Israel walked on the dry ground in the middle of the sea") places the location phrase "in the middle of the sea" (tokh, H8432, construct) after the surface description "on the dry ground," so the dry ground is specified as being situated within the sea itself, not beside it.

The second clause states that hamayim lahem choma ("the water was for them a wall", H2346G), using a single feminine singular noun choma. This one noun is then distributed to both sides through two parallel prepositional constructions: mi-yemina-m ("from their right", H3225G) and u-mi-semola-m ("and from their left", H8040G), each with a 3rd person plural possessive suffix ("their"). The Hebrew text thus uses one wall-noun applied bilaterally, rather than naming two separate walls.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders the single Hebrew choma ("wall") as two occurrences of τεῖχος ("wall"), one for the right side and one for the left, producing "a wall on the right and a wall on the left" instead of the Hebrew's single wall-noun applied to both sides. The Vulgate uses "quasi pro muro" ("as if for a wall"), adding a comparative sense ("quasi") not present in the Hebrew, which states directly that the water "was for them a wall" without a comparative marker.