Numbers 33:42

Summary

The verse records a single stage in the Israelites' wilderness itinerary: departure from Zalmonah and encampment at Punon. It follows the standard formulaic pattern used throughout Numbers 33 to list successive stopping points.

Key words

• va-yis'u ("and they set out", H5265) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking sequential action ("and then they set out"); third person masculine plural, referring to the collective group.
• mi-Tzalmonah ("from Zalmonah", H6758) — proper place name preceded by the preposition mi ("from", H9006), indicating the point of departure.
• va-yachanu ("and they encamped", H2583) — qal verb with narrative vav, parallel in form to va-yis'u, continuing the sequential chain of the itinerary.
• be-Funon ("at Punon", H6325) — proper place name preceded by the preposition be ("at/in", H9003), indicating the location of encampment.

What the text says

The verse is built on a tight two-part structure, each part consisting of a narrative verb (marked by the vav-consecutive, glossed as "and then...") followed by a prepositional phrase naming a place. The first clause, va-yis'u mi-Tzalmonah ("and they set out from Zalmonah"), uses the preposition mi ("from", H9006) to mark the origin of movement. The second clause, va-yachanu be-Funon ("and they encamped at Punon"), uses the preposition be ("at", H9003) to mark the destination and static state of encampment. Both verbs are qal (simple stem) and third person masculine plural, referring to the group traveling collectively without any named individual subject — the verse assumes the reader already knows who "they" are from the surrounding narrative.

The grammatical parallelism between yis'u ("they set out") and yachanu ("they encamped") mirrors the two-stage rhythm found throughout this chapter's itinerary list: departure from one site, arrival at another. No additional information — distance, duration, or reason for the move — is supplied by the Hebrew; the verse is purely a geographical notation within a longer sequence of such notations.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew place name Tzalmonah (H6758) appears in the LXX as Σελμωνά (Selmona) and in the Vulgate implicitly as the starting point of "egressi" ("having departed"), though the Vulgate does not name Zalmonah explicitly, only stating Unde egressi ("from where they went out"), referring back to the previously named location in the prior verse. The Hebrew Funon (H6325) appears as Φεινώ (Pheino) in the LXX and as Phunon in the Vulgate, both transliterating the same place name with minor phonetic variation.