Numbers 33:5

Summary

The verse records the departure of the Israelites from Rameses and their first encampment at Succoth, opening the itinerary list of Numbers 33. It states two consecutive actions: setting out and encamping, marking the beginning of the wilderness journey stages.

Key words

va-yis'u ("and they set out", H5265) — qal verb in narrative (vav-consecutive) form, third person masculine plural; it presents the departure as the next event in a sequential chain of past actions.

benei ("[the] people of", H1121G) — masculine plural noun in construct state, meaning it must be followed by another noun to complete its sense ("sons/people of X"); here it links to Yisra'el.

Yisra'el ("Israel", H3478) — proper name functioning as the entity performing the actions of setting out and encamping.

me-Ra'meses ("from Rameses", H9006 + H7486G) — preposition me ("from") prefixed to the place name, indicating the point of origin of the movement.

va-yachanu ("and they encamped", H2583) — qal verb in narrative form, third person masculine plural, continuing the same sequential chain as va-yis'u; it marks the resulting action (stopping and camping) after the departure.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two parallel narrative verb forms — va-yis'u ("and they set out") and va-yachanu ("and they encamped") — both third person masculine plural qal forms joined by the narrative vav (H9001). This construction presents the two actions as a direct temporal sequence: departure followed by arrival/encampment, a pattern that repeats throughout the itinerary of Numbers 33. The subject, benei Yisra'el ("the people of Israel"), is expressed once and governs both verbs.

The prepositions me ("from", H9006) and be ("at", H9003) mark the geographical framework of the verse: movement away from Rameses and settlement at Succoth. The construct phrase benei Yisra'el uses the plural noun benei ("people/sons of") linked directly to the place-name-like proper noun Yisra'el, a standard construct chain identifying the collective group as belonging to or named after Israel.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate text provided here (VULCLEM) preserves only the second clause, "castrametati sunt in Soccoth" ("they encamped in Succoth"), omitting the first clause about departure from Rameses that appears in the Hebrew, the LXX (ἀπάραντες... ἐκ Ῥαμεσσὴ), and the modern translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE). The LXX renders the narrative sequence with a participle (ἀπάραντες, "having set out") followed by a finite verb (παρενέβαλον, "they camped"), differing structurally from the Hebrew's two parallel finite narrative verbs.