Exodus 10:1

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to go to Pharaoh, explaining that he himself has made Pharaoh's heart and the hearts of his officials "heavy," with the stated purpose of performing his signs among them. The verse frames the confrontation with Pharaoh as directly caused and purposed by Yehovah's action.

Key words

• hikhBadti ("I have made heavy", H3513H) — hiphil (causative) perfect, first person: the causative stem indicates that the subject (Yehovah) actively caused the heaviness/heaviness of heart, rather than the heart becoming heavy on its own; the perfect aspect marks this as a completed action prior to the command to "go."
• lev ("heart", H3820A) — masculine singular construct, appearing twice (once for Pharaoh, once for his servants), grammatically linking "heart" to its possessor via construct chains ("heart of him," "heart of his servants").
• lema'an ("so as / in order that", H4616) — subordinating particle introducing a purpose clause, connecting the hardening of verse 1 to the goal stated afterward.
• shiti ("to perform", H7896G) — qal infinitive construct with first-person suffix, functioning as "my placing/performing," dependent on lema'an, expressing the intended action tied to the purpose clause.
• ototai ("my signs", H0226G) — feminine plural construct with first-person suffix, marking the signs as belonging to and originating from Yehovah.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on yomer ("and he said," H0559), the standard chain-marker moving the story forward, followed by the divine name Yehovah (H3068G) as subject. The core address to Moses is minimal: the imperative bo' ("go," H0935G) with the preposition 'el ("to," H0413) and Par'oh ("Pharaoh," H6547J) — a short direct command with no elaboration.

The causal clause introduced by ki ("for/that," H3588A) supplies the reasoning behind the command. Here 'ani ("I," H0589) is an independent pronoun placed before the verb hikhbadti, which in Biblical Hebrew syntax often adds emphasis to the subject — stressing that it is Yehovah, specifically, who performed this action. The verb’s hiphil stem marks it as causative, contrasting with a stative or qal form that might describe the heart simply "being heavy." Two objects are marked by the untranslated direct object particle 'et (H0853): "his heart" and "the heart of his servants," joined by the conjunction ve- (H9002), showing that Pharaoh and his officials are both direct objects of the same completed causative action.

The final clause, introduced by lema'an plus the infinitive shiti, expresses purpose: the infinitive with the first-person suffix ("my placing/doing") is governed by the subordinating particle, linking the hardening described earlier to the display of ototai 'eleh ("these my signs," H0226G/H0428) beqirbo ("in his midst," H7130G) — the signs are to occur within/among Pharaoh’s domain.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hikhbadti ("I have made heavy") with ἐσκλήρυνα ("I hardened"), using a different verb root (σκληρύνω, "to harden/stiffen") rather than one built on "heaviness." The Vulgate similarly uses induravi ("I have hardened"), aligning with the LXX's semantic choice rather than the Hebrew's "heavy" imagery. The Hebrew lev ("heart") is rendered as καρδίαν/cor in both versions, preserving the anatomical/metaphorical term directly. The purpose clause in the LXX (ἵνα ἑξῆς ἐπέλθῃ τὰ σημεῖα, "that the signs may come in succession") introduces the notion of sequence ("in succession/one after another") not explicitly present in the Hebrew lema'an shiti ("so that I may place/perform"), which speaks of Yehovah's own act of placing/performing the signs rather than their successive occurrence.