Exodus 10:13

Summary

Moses stretches his staff over Egypt, and Yehovah drives an east wind across the land for a full day and night. By morning, that east wind has carried in the locusts.

Key words

• va.Yet ("he stretched out", H5186) — qal narrative verb, marking the first sequential action performed by Moses.
• ma.Tehu ("his staff", H4294G) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, "the staff of him," linking the object directly to Moses.
• ni.Hag ("he drove", H5090A) — piel perfect, an intensive verb form indicating a forceful, deliberate driving action by Yehovah, distinct from a simple qal "he blew."
• Ru.ach ka.Dim ("wind of the east", H7307H + H6921) — construct chain, "wind of the east(ward direction)," repeated twice in the verse to frame the beginning and end of the episode.
• na.Sa' ("it carried", H5375H) — qal perfect, describing the wind's action of lifting/bearing the locusts onto the land.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel narrative sequences joined by va ("and", H9001/H9002) chains typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative. The first clause centers on Moses: va.Yet mo.Sheh 'et-ma.Tehu 'al-'Eretz mitz.ra.Yim ("and Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt"), using the qal form of i.Yet to present a single, simple completed action. The second clause shifts subject to Yehovah with ni.Hag, a piel perfect verb conveying intensified causation — not merely "wind blew" but Yehovah actively "drove" the Ru.ach ka.Dim ("wind of the east"). The construct phrase Ru.ach ka.Dim appears twice (lines 13-14 and 30-32), the second time with the definite article on ka.Dim ("the east"), tying the wind mentioned at the start of the day to the specific wind that later performs the action of na.Sa' ("it carried") the locusts.

The temporal structure is marked by the construct chains kol-ha.Yom ha.Hu' ("all of that day") and khol-ha.Lay.lah ("all of the night"), followed by ha.Boker ha.Yah ("the morning came/was"), a qal perfect of ha.Yah ("it was", H1961) marking the transition to the moment when the locusts appear. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) appears before both ma.Tehu and ha.'ar.Beh, formally marking the staff and the locusts as grammatical objects of their respective verbs, though the marker itself carries no independent meaning.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew Ru.ach ka.Dim ("wind of the east", H7307H + H6921) is rendered in the LXX as ἄνεμον νότον ("south wind") rather than an east wind, a divergence in the compass direction specified. The Vulgate instead renders it as ventum urentem ("a burning/scorching wind"), describing the wind's quality rather than its cardinal direction. The Hebrew verb ni.Hag ("he drove", piel) corresponds to the LXX ἐπήγαγεν ("he brought upon") and the Vulgate induxit ("he brought in"), both of which express causation but without the same intensive nuance carried by the Hebrew piel stem.