Illustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
Etnahta is one of the most common notes in the Torah. Its job is to mark a stopping point in the middle of the verse; you can think of it like a colon or a semicolon in English. It looks kind of like a wishbone, but also like something firmly at rest, and the word etnahta means a resting point!
The etnahta is everywhere, but sometimes (thirteen times in the whole Torah, to be exact) it appears on the first word in a verse. Our parashah has two examples of this:
וַיֹּאמַ֑ר פָּנַ֥י יֵלֵ֖כוּ וַהֲנִחֹ֥תִי לָֽךְ׃
And He said: My face will go, and I will lighten your burden
וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הַרְאֵ֥נִי נָ֖א אֶת־כְּבֹדֶֽךָ׃
He said: Please, let me behold Your Presence!
See if you can find all the verses in our parashah that don’t have an etnahta. Hint: there are seven!
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