Exodus 15:4

Summary

The verse describes the destruction of Pharaoh's military force at the sea: his chariots and army were "thrown" into the sea, while his elite officers were "sunk" specifically in the yam suf ("sea of reeds"). The verse forms a poetic parallelism, pairing chariots/army with officers, and "the sea" (generic) with "sea of reeds" (specific).

Key words

• yarah ("he has thrown", H3384A) — qal perfect, active voice, third person masculine singular; describes a completed act of throwing/hurling, with the grammatical subject not stated in this verse but understood from the preceding context.
• tubbe'u ("they have been sunk", H2883) — pual perfect, third person plural; the pual stem marks an intensive passive, meaning the officers were the ones acted upon, with no explicit external agent named in the verb form itself.
• mirkevot ("chariots of", H4818) — feminine plural construct noun, requiring a following noun to complete its meaning (here, Par'oh, "Pharaoh").
• mivchar ("choicest of", H4005) — masculine singular construct noun, functioning as a superlative marker for the officers that follow.
• yam suf ("sea of reeds", H3220G + H5488G) — construct chain naming a specific body of water, distinct from the earlier unspecified ha-yam ("the sea") in the same verse.

What the text says

The verse is built as a two-part parallel structure. The first half places "chariots of Pharaoh and his army" (mirkevot Par'oh ve-cheylo) as the object of the verb yarah ("he has thrown"), a qal perfect active form. The subject of this verb is not repeated in the verse but continues from the surrounding poetic context. The second half shifts grammatical construction: "the choicest of his officers" (mivchar shalishav) becomes the grammatical subject of tubbe'u ("they have been sunk"), a pual perfect — the passive counterpart to the active qal used in the first half. This alternation between active (with implied agent) and passive (without stated agent) is a feature of the Hebrew that a translation using two active or two passive verbs cannot fully preserve.

The verse also moves from a general term for the sea, ha-yam ("the sea", with definite article), to a specific construct name, yam suf ("sea of reeds"), narrowing the location in the second colon.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tubbe'u ("they have been sunk") with κατεπόθησαν ("they were swallowed"), a different verbal image than the Hebrew "sinking." The Vulgate's submersi sunt ("they were submerged") more closely mirrors the passive sense of the Hebrew pual. Both the LXX (ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῃ, "red sea") and the Vulgate (mari Rubro, "Red Sea") translate yam suf by color ("red"), whereas the Hebrew construct itself names the sea using suf ("reed[s]", H5488G) rather than a color term.