Numbers 12:16

Summary

The verse narrates a transition: after the people set out from Hazeroth, they made camp in the wilderness of Paran. It is a short notice marking a change of location in the wilderness itinerary.

Key words

• 'a.Char ("after", H0310A) — introduces a temporal sequence, placing this action after a preceding event.
• na.se.'U ("they set out", H5265) — qal perfect, third person plural, describing a completed act of departure by the people as a collective.
• 'Am ("people", H5971A) — masculine singular noun with the definite article ha ("the", H9009), referring to the group as a single body even though the verb agrees with a plural/collective sense.
• i.ya.cha.Nu ("they encamped", H2583) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), continuing the storyline directly from the previous verb of departure.
• mid.Bar ("[the] wilderness of", H4057B) — construct form, meaning it must be linked to the following noun Pa.Ran ("Paran") to form the phrase "wilderness of Paran," rather than standing as an independent noun.

What the text says

The verse is built on two consecutive verbs describing movement: na.se.'U ("they set out", H5265) and i.ya.cha.Nu ("they encamped", H2583). The first is a qal perfect, marking the completed action of departure, while the second uses the narrative vav construction, which in Biblical Hebrew signals sequential action — "and then they encamped." This grammatical chaining presents the departure and the encampment as two steps of a single continuous movement rather than as separate, unrelated events.

The noun 'Am ("people", H5971A) is singular in form but functions as a collective subject, matching the plural verb forms through agreement conventions for collective nouns in Biblical Hebrew. The phrase mid.Bar Pa.Ran ("wilderness of Paran") uses the construct state, a grammatical link in Hebrew that binds two nouns together into a single phrase, "wilderness of Paran," similar to how English uses "wilderness of" plus a place name. The preposition me ("from", H9006) governing cha.tze.Rot ("Hazeroth", H2698) marks the point of departure, while be ("in", H9003) before mid.Bar marks the location of arrival, framing the verse spatially: departure from one place, arrival in another.