Exodus 16:5

Summary

The verse instructs that on the sixth day the Israelites will prepare what they bring in, and this amount will turn out to be double what they gather on the other days. It uses a chain of sequential perfect verbs to describe the future procedure that governs the daily gathering of food.

Key words

• ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, appears twice (words 2 and 13), marking the two consequences of the sixth day: preparation and doubling.
• he.Khi.nu ("they will prepare", H3559A) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, indicating an action they cause to happen, i.e. making ready what has been brought.
• ya.Vi.'u ("they will bring", H0935P) — hiphil imperfect, denoting an ongoing or repeated future action, the bringing-in that precedes preparation.
• mish.Neh ("double", H4932H) — masculine singular noun, the quantity that results from the sixth-day gathering.
• yil.ke.Tu ("they will gather", H3950) — qal imperfect, describing the habitual daily gathering against which the double amount is measured.

What the text says

The sentence is built on a chain of ve- ("and") plus sequential perfect verbs (ha.Yah, he.Khi.nu, ha.Yah), a construction typical of Biblical Hebrew for describing sequences of future or procedural events. Each perfect verb, though grammatically "perfect," functions here as a continuation of a preceding future-oriented statement, so the English renderings "it will be," "they will prepare" reflect this sequential sense rather than a completed past action.

Two relative clauses introduced by 'a.Sher ("that/which", H0834A) frame the content of what is prepared and what is gathered: "that which they will bring" (ya.Vi.'u, imperfect) and "that which they will gather" (yil.ke.Tu, imperfect). The imperfect aspect in both cases marks the bringing and gathering as recurring or open-ended actions, contrasted with the punctual sequential perfects that mark the outcome (preparing, being double).

The phrase yom yom ("day, day", H3117J repeated) at the end functions distributively, meaning "day by day" or "each day," setting up the comparison: the amount prepared on the sixth day equals twice what is gathered on any ordinary day. The construction places the doubling (mish.neh, "double", H4932H) explicitly 'al ("on/over", H5921A) the daily gathering amount, i.e., in excess of or in proportion to it.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the repeated yom yom as τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν εἰς ἡμέραν ("that which is according to day, unto day"), preserving the distributive sense but with a prepositional phrase rather than simple repetition. The Vulgate renders it as "per singulos dies" ("through each single day"), also distributive but using a different grammatical strategy (an adjective + preposition) than the Hebrew's bare noun repetition. The BSB and SBLIBRE both interpret he.Khi.nu ("they will prepare") with a temporal/conditional nuance ("when they prepare"), whereas the Hebrew sequential perfect presents it as a direct continuation of the narrative sequence rather than a subordinate clause.