Did Moshe not take a single donkey? Or a donkey of a single one of them?

In Moshe's complaint in parshat Korach, we have:

טו וַיִּחַר לְמֹשֶׁה, מְאֹד, וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל-ה', אַל-תֵּפֶן אֶל-מִנְחָתָם; לֹא חֲמוֹר אֶחָד מֵהֶם, נָשָׂאתִי, וְלֹא הֲרֵעֹתִי, אֶת-אַחַד מֵהֶם.

15 And Moses was very wroth, and said unto the LORD: 'Respect not Thou their offering; I have not taken one ass from them, neither have I hurt one of them.'

But how should we translate chamor echad meihem? The middle word, echad, could associate either with the previous or the next word.

The trup is no help, since chamor has a kadma and echad has a mahpach. Both of these are mesharetim, conjunctive trup, and so there is no pause there to help us parse it.

Later in the pasuk, we have achad mehem, where it means "one of them," so perhaps we should take the earlier run of these two words the same. On the other hand, the vowels at the end of the pasuk are of the pattern patach patach, so perhaps they are different.

Rashi takes it as "donkey of one of them." Thus,

I have not taken a donkey from a single one of them: I did not take a donkey from any one of them. Even when I went from Midian to Egypt, and I placed my wife and sons on a donkey to ride, and I should have taken that donkey from their property, I took only from my own property (Tanchuma Korach 7, Num. Rabbah 10). Onkelos renders it as שְׁחָרִית, ‘expropriated.’ In Aramaic, the king’s service is called שַׁחְוַור.

לא חמור אחד מהם נשאתי: לא חמורו של אחד מהם נטלתי. אפילו כשהלכתי ממדין למצרים והרכבתי את אשתי ואת בני על החמור, והיה לי ליטול אותו החמור משלהם, לא נטלתי אלא משלי. ותרגום אנקלוס, שחרית, לשון ארמי, כך נקראת אנגריא של מלך שחוור:

And so do all the Targumim render it.

In contrast, Ramban takes it as "a single donkey of theirs." Thus:

וטעם לא חמור אחד מהם נשאתי
אמר מה שררה אני משתרר עליהם, כי מעולם לא לקחתי מהם אפילו חמור אחד לעשות צרכי כדרך המלכים או השרים, כי זה משפט המלוכה דכתיב (ש"א ח טז): ואת חמוריכם יקח ועשה למלאכתו. וזה טעם של אונקלוס"שחרית", שכך נקרא אנגריא של מלך שחוור (ב"ב מז א). הזכיר הדבר הקטן שבדיני מלכות.

Rashbam makes the point that the nikkud should help disambiguate, and that it is echad rather than achad means that it is one donkey, not a donkey of one of them. Thus:

לא חמור אחד מהם נשאתי -
אפילו חמור אחד לא נשאתי מהם כשאר משתוררים על העם. ואם כן למה מפשיעים אותי בשררה?!
ואם היה נקוד לא חמור אַחַד מהם (בפת"ח) פתרונו היה חמור של אחד מהם כמו: אַחַד העם, וכמו: את אַחַד מהם.

And here is where I first saw it, in Chizkuni:

chamor echad: According to its vowel points, its explanation is in accordance with its {plain} implication. However, according to the explanation of Rashi it should have been vocalized like achad haam {at the end of the pasuk}.

It seems that the idea is that where אחד precedes the word it modifies, it should be achad, while if it follows the word it modifies, it should be echad.

I did a search for אחד מהם to see how the evidence stacks up. We have:

במדבר פרק טז

• פסוק טו: וַיִּחַר לְמֹשֶׁה, מְאֹד, וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל-יְהוָה, אַל-תֵּפֶן אֶל-מִנְחָתָם; לֹא חֲמוֹר אֶחָד מֵהֶם, נָשָׂאתִי, וְלֹא הֲרֵעֹתִי, אֶת-אַחַד מֵהֶם.

which is the pasuk under consideration. We also have:

דברים פרק כה

• פסוק ה: כִּי-יֵשְׁבוּ אַחִים יַחְדָּו, וּמֵת אַחַד מֵהֶם וּבֵן אֵין-לוֹ--לֹא-תִהְיֶה אֵשֶׁת-הַמֵּת הַחוּצָה, לְאִישׁ זָר: יְבָמָהּ יָבֹא עָלֶיהָ, וּלְקָחָהּ לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה וְיִבְּמָהּ.

שמואל ב פרק יג

• פסוק ל: וַיְהִי, הֵמָּה בַדֶּרֶךְ, וְהַשְּׁמֻעָה בָאָה, אֶל-דָּוִד לֵאמֹר: הִכָּה אַבְשָׁלוֹם אֶת-כָּל-בְּנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ, וְלֹא-נוֹתַר מֵהֶם אֶחָד.

מלכים א פרק יט

• פסוק ב: וַתִּשְׁלַח אִיזֶבֶל מַלְאָךְ, אֶל-אֵלִיָּהוּ לֵאמֹר: כֹּה-יַעֲשׂוּן אֱלֹהִים, וְכֹה יוֹסִפוּן, כִּי-כָעֵת מָחָר אָשִׂים אֶת-נַפְשְׁךָ, כְּנֶפֶשׁ אַחַד מֵהֶם.

מלכים א פרק כב

• פסוק יג: וְהַמַּלְאָךְ אֲשֶׁר-הָלַךְ לִקְרֹא מִיכָיְהוּ, דִּבֶּר אֵלָיו לֵאמֹר, הִנֵּה-נָא דִּבְרֵי הַנְּבִיאִים פֶּה-אֶחָד טוֹב, אֶל-הַמֶּלֶךְ; יְהִי-נָא דבריך (דְבָרְךָ), כִּדְבַר אַחַד מֵהֶם--וְדִבַּרְתָּ טּוֹב.

דברי הימים ב פרק יח

• פסוק יב: וְהַמַּלְאָךְ אֲשֶׁר-הָלַךְ לִקְרֹא לְמִיכָיְהוּ, דִּבֶּר אֵלָיו לֵאמֹר, הִנֵּה דִּבְרֵי הַנְּבִאִים פֶּה-אֶחָד טוֹב, אֶל-הַמֶּלֶךְ; וִיהִי-נָא דְבָרְךָ כְּאַחַד מֵהֶם, וְדִבַּרְתָּ טּוֹב.

In each of these cases, achad meihem means one of them, and meihem echad means the same, but has echad after the modifying word. However, we have the nikkud of asher yatzar, which is echad meihem, rather than achad meihem. And we also have a famous pasuk in Tehillim:

תהילים פרק קו

• פסוק יא: וַיְכַסּוּ-מַיִם צָרֵיהֶם; אֶחָד מֵהֶם, לֹא נוֹתָר.

How do we justify Rashbam and Chizkuni's statement, in light of that pasuk in Tehillim? Maybe I am misunderstanding their point...

Let me close with a citation from the LXX translation on this pasuk. It is messed up in other ways, but:

15 And Moses was exceeding indignant, and said to the Lord, Do thou take no heed to their sacrifice: I have not taken away the desire of any one of them, neither have I hurt any one of them.

This is like Ramban and Rashbam.

This is not to say that Rashi cannot decide to interpret a pasuk against the nikkud. Shadal points out that Rashi does this on occassion, and ascribes this not to accident or concern with drash over peshat, but to a position that nikkud is post-Sinaitic and that therefore one is entitled to argue against it to determine the peshat. But maybe we can simply say that Rashi was not convinced that this was the intent of the nikkud, given the example in Tehillim.

Update: As Anonymous (please choose a pseudonym, because otherwise it is very hard to keep track of who is who!) points out in the comment section, a classic distinction made by baalei dikduk between echad and achad is that echad is meyuchad, a particular one, while achad is "any one." Perhaps this is akin to a bound and unbound variable in logic. I believe that one must be careful not to take it too precisely, to make meyuchad into some known entity, because that might cross the line from dikduk to midrash. But tentatively, I can see how this works with many pesukim.

If so, then it is a strong possibility that this is Chizkuni's point, and Rashbam's point. "I did not take a single donkey of theirs" is a case of meyuchad. You cannot point to any particular donkey that happened to belong to them that I took. As opposed to "I did not take a donkey of any of them." So this is what Chizkuni and Rashbam mean by the nikkud.

Meanwhile, Rashi has the context at the end of the pasuk, where we would expect the same bigram to mean the same thing is such close proximity.

In terms of trup, I don't think that Anonymous' comment is convincing. (See below in the comment section.) Indeed, I was toying with various examples of disjunctive trup in the middle of it, but shortened my dismissal of the trup above from what was originally a paragraph to a sentence or to, about why it was not helpful. Yes, I agree that had the trup been different, it could help parse, such that e.g. a pashta one word earlier could make it, on echad, would make it:
Not a single donkey | of theirs did I take.

But I am not convinced that the absence of such disjunctive trup proves the opposite. Because we can set it up as:
What did I not take? a single donkey of theirs.
or
What did I not take? a donkey of any of them.