Exodus 1:1

Analysis and Discussion

Here's the Hebrew text of Exodus 1:1

> וְאֵ֗לֶּה שְׁמוֹת֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל הַבָּאִ֖ים מִצְרָ֑יְמָה אֵ֣ת יַעֲקֹ֔ב אִ֥ישׁ וּבֵית֖וֹ בָּֽאוּ׃

Next, here's a translation:

And these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; each one came with his household.

In this posts, I'll assume that you know how to read the Hebrew alphabet. If you don't, but you still want to learn Hebrew, please go to this fantastic Hebrew Alphabet course on Memrise and learn the alphabet.

Now, let's talk vocabulary and grammar. In general, I'll try break up the text into phrases, because that's a much more natural way to learn any language than just isolating individual words and translating them. First, we have וְאֵ֗לֶּה שְׁמוֹת֙, which means "and these are the names (of)." We add the "of" because of what's coming next. The ו prefix at the beginning of וְאֵ֗לֶּה means "and," but we often don't translate it.

Then אלה means "these." It's one of a grouping of pronouns in Hebrew - words that replace nouns. English has "this/that/these/those." I'm sure we'll stumble across the other pronouns in due time.

The word שְׁמוֹת֙ means "names." It's interesting, because it's a plural noun (it refers to more than two names) but it's also in the masculine gender and it has what looks like a feminine plural ending. Most of the time, Hebrew masculine nouns have the masculine plural ending (the -ים ending) but sometimes not. That -ות you see on the end of שְׁמוֹת֙ is what we often think of as the feminine plural.

After that, we have בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל, which just means "sons of Israel." It's a construct phrase, which means that the two words are somehow connected to each other. Often, a good way to start translating construct phrases is to add the word "of" and see how it sounds in English. Here, the word "of" makes a lot of sense - the "sons of Israel." The way we know it's a construct is because the usual plural form for "sons" is בנים but here it's בני.

Next, we have הַבָּאִ֖ים מִצְרָ֑יְמָה. This phrase means "who came to Egypt." That first word, הַבָּאִ֖ים, means "the ones who came" or "those who came." It's a participle. Participles are (long story short) verbs that act like nouns. In this case, with the word הַבָּאִ֖ים, without the ה in the beginning באים would be a simple plural present tense verb. But with the ה there (which means "the" by the way) it changes from "coming" to "the ones coming." Hope that makes sense!

The word מִצְרָ֑יְמָה means "to Egypt." It comes from the word מצרים, which means "Egypt," and the ה at the end means "to." Grammarians call it the "locative ה" because it means going to somewhere.

Our next phrase, אֵ֣ת יַעֲקֹ֔ב, just means "with Jacob." After that, our final phrase אִ֥ישׁ וּבֵית֖וֹ בָּֽאוּ means "(each) man with his household came." The word איש means "man," and וּבֵית֖וֹ means "and his household." The ו at the beginning of וּבֵית֖וֹ means "and," and the ו at the end means "his." Now that we know what those are, the word בית means "house" or "household." That's it!