Exodus 5:12

Summary

The verse narrates the consequence of Pharaoh's order: the people spread out through the entire land of Egypt to collect stubble to use in place of straw for brickmaking. The sentence marks a shift in the narrative from command to action, showing the physical dispersal necessitated by the withdrawal of provided straw.

Key words

• va-yafetz ("and it scattered", H6327A) — Hiphil (causative) verb in the narrative form; grammatically causative, though here the people are both the ones acting and dispersing themselves, not scattering something else.
• ha'am ("the people", H5971A) — definite singular noun, subject of the scattering verb; the collective referred to as one unit.
• kol 'erets Mitzrayim ("all the land of Egypt", H3605 + H0776G + H4714G) — construct chain indicating the full geographic extent of the dispersal, "all of" governing "land of Egypt."
• leqoshesh ("to gather", H7197A) — Piel infinitive construct with prefixed le, expressing purpose ("in order to gather"); the Piel stem intensifies the action of collecting.
• qash...teven ("stubble"/"straw", H7179, H8401) — two distinct nouns naming different plant material; qash is what is gathered, teven is what it replaces.

What the text says

The clause opens with the narrative va prefixed to yafetz, continuing the sequence of events from the preceding verses. The verb form is Hiphil, a stem that in Biblical Hebrew regularly marks causative action, yet here it functions to describe the people's own movement — they scatter (or "cause themselves to scatter") across the land. The subject ha'am ("the people") is marked with the definite article, referring back to the group already introduced in the narrative.

The prepositional phrase bekol 'erets Mitzrayim uses the construct chain kol...'erets...Mitzrayim ("all the land of Egypt") to specify the extent of the scattering — not merely local movement but dispersal across the entire country. This is followed by a purpose clause introduced by the preposition le attached to the Piel infinitive qoshesh ("to gather"), the intensive stem suggesting a diligent or repeated gathering activity, appropriate to the effort of collecting a substitute material.

The final phrase pairs two nouns, qash ("stubble") and teven ("straw"), joined by the preposition la ("for the"). The grammar makes explicit a substitution: qash is the object being gathered, and teven is the item for which it substitutes — the straw formerly supplied and now missing.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the verb as diesparē ("was scattered"), a passive form, and the Vulgate similarly uses dispersus est ("was dispersed"), a passive construction. This differs from the Hebrew yafetz, which is grammatically Hiphil (causative in stem formation) though describing the people's self-directed dispersal. The Hebrew does not use a passive verbal stem here, while both the Greek and Latin versions render the action with explicit passive voice.