Exodus 16:27

Summary

The verse reports that on the seventh day some of the people went out to gather (manna), following the pattern of the preceding days, but they found nothing. The narrative marks a contrast with earlier days when gathering was possible.

Key words

• va-yehi ("and it was", H9001 + H1961) — narrative vav plus the qal verb "to be," a standard formula opening a new narrative event, here setting the temporal frame "and it happened on..."
• ba-yom ("on the day", H9003 + H3117G) — preposition + noun marking the specific day being referred to, followed by the ordinal.
• ha-shevi'i ("the seventh", H9009 + H7637) — definite ordinal number, identifying which day is meant, echoing the sabbath day established earlier in the chapter's context.
• yatze'u ("they went out", H3318G) — qal perfect, third person plural, describing a completed action performed by an unspecified subset of the people.
• matza'u ("they found", H4672) — qal perfect, third person plural, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), stating the completed but negative outcome of the search.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative formula va-yehi ("and it was", H1961), a construction that signals a new episode in the story without specifying causality — it simply moves the narrative forward. This is followed by a temporal clause, ba-yom ha-shevi'i ("on the seventh day", H3117G + H7637), which anchors the action to a specific point already established in the surrounding narrative.

The main clause uses two qal perfect verbs in sequence: yatze'u ("they went out", H3318G) and matza'u ("they found", H4672), both third person plural, describing completed actions. The subject is not the whole people but a portion of them, indicated by min-ha-'am ("some of the people", H4480A + H5971A) — the preposition min here functions partitively, meaning "some from" rather than "all of." The purpose of going out is expressed by the infinitive construct li-lqot ("to gather", H3950), preceded by the preposition le- ("to"), a standard Hebrew construction for expressing purpose or intention.

The final clause, ve-lo' matza'u ("and they did not find", H9002 + H3808 + H4672), negates the expected outcome. The perfect aspect of matza'u presents the non-finding as a completed, definite fact rather than an ongoing search. The Hebrew text does not specify what they failed to find (no direct object is given), leaving the object of li-lqot ("to gather") and matza'u ("they found") implicit, understood from the wider context of the chapter.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the subject as τινες ("some"), an explicit indefinite pronoun matching the partitive sense of the Hebrew min-ha-'am ("some of the people", H4480A + H5971A). The Vulgate's egressi de populo ("those who went out from the people") likewise conveys partitivity through de populo, similar to the Hebrew construction. The Vulgate opens with venitque septima dies ("and the seventh day came"), a phrasing that shifts the grammatical subject from an impersonal "it happened" (Hebrew va-yehi, H1961) to "the day" itself as the subject of "came," a structural difference from the Hebrew's verb-of-being construction.