Exodus 15:23

Summary

The verse narrates that the Israelites arrived at Marah but could not drink its water because it was bitter, and states that this bitterness is the reason the place was named Marah ("Marah", H4785).

Key words

• va-yyavo'u — verb qal, narrative form of "they came" (H0935G), opens the sequence of events with the standard narrative vav (H9001) that links this episode to the preceding journey.
• yakhelu — qal perfect "they were able" (H3201), marking a completed (failed) action: their inability to drink is presented as a finished fact, not an ongoing state.
• marim — adjective masculine plural "[were] bitter" (H4751), agreeing with the plural noun mayim ("waters", H4325G), describing the water itself as bitter rather than describing the place.
• ki — subordinating particle "for/that" (H3588A), introducing the causal clause that explains why they could not drink.
• shem-ah — construct noun "name of...her" (H8034 + H9024), the possessive suffix referring back to Marah as a feminine place, used in the etiological formula "its name was called."

What the text says

The verse is built as a short causal chain typical of Hebrew narrative etiologies. The main clause reports arrival (va-yyavo'u...Marata) followed immediately by a negated ability clause (ve-lo yakhelu lishtot mayim) using the infinitive lishtot ("to drink", H8354) governed by yakhelu. The reason is given by the particle ki ("for", H3588A) plus the predicate adjective marim ("bitter", H4751) with the pronoun hem ("they", H1992), a construction where the adjective precedes the pronoun-subject, a common Hebrew word order for stating a quality as the cause of an event.

The final clause, al-ken qara shemah Marah, uses the idiomatic formula al-ken ("therefore", H5921A + H3651C) followed by qara ("someone called", H7121H) in the third-person qal perfect without an explicit subject — a common impersonal construction in Hebrew meaning "one called" or "it was called." The suffix on shem ("name", H8034) plus -ah ("her", H9024) refers back to the place, tying the toponym Marah directly to the adjective marim ("bitter") used earlier, so the name and the cause of the name share the same root in the Hebrew text.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the place name as Merra and translates the causal clause with pikron gar ēn ("for it was bitter"), attributing bitterness to an implicit subject (the water) rather than repeating the plural adjective construction of the Hebrew. It also renders the naming formula as "he named the name of that place 'Bitterness'" (pikria), making the meaning of the name explicit as a common noun, whereas the Hebrew leaves Marah as a proper name without directly glossing it. The Vulgate similarly adds an explanatory gloss, "id est, amaritudinem" ("that is, bitterness"), which is not present as a separate clause in the Hebrew text.