Exodus 10:21

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה נְטֵה יָֽדְךָ עַל־הַשָּׁמַיִם וִיהִי חֹשֶׁךְ עַל־אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם וְיָמֵשׁ חֹֽשֶׁךְ׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

Tap a word to see its entry

✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה נְטֵ֤ה יָֽדְךָ֙ עַל־הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וִ֥יהִי חֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־אֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם וְיָמֵ֖שׁ חֹֽשֶׁךְ׃

Greek (Septuagint)

Εἶπεν δὲ κύριος πρὸς Μωυσῆν Ἔκτεινον τὴν χεῖρά σου εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν, καὶ γενηθήτω σκότος ἐπὶ γῆν Αἰγύπτου, ψηλαφητὸν σκότος.

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

Dixit autem Dominus ad Moysen: Extende manum tuam in cælum: et sint tenebræ super terram Ægypti tam densæ, ut palpari queant.

Spanish

Yehová le dijo a Moisés: “Levanta la mano hacia el cielo para que todo Egipto se cubra de oscuridad, una oscuridad tan densa que hasta se pueda sentir.”

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Y Jehová dijo á Moisés: Extiende tu mano hacia el cielo, para que haya tinieblas sobre la tierra de Egipto, tales que cualquiera las palpe.

English

Then the LORD said to Moses, “ Stretch out your hand toward heaven, so that darkness may spread over the land of Egypt — a palpable darkness.”

✦ What the text says

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to stretch his hand toward the sky so that darkness comes over the land of Egypt. The Hebrew text closes with a second occurrence of "darkness" combined with a verb describing this darkness as one that can be groped or felt.

Key words

ne.Teh ("stretch out", H5186) — qal imperative, 2nd masculine singular: a direct command to Moses to perform the gesture.
ya.de.kha ("your hand", H3027G + H9021) — noun in construct form with pronominal suffix, specifying whose hand is stretched out.
vi.hi ("may it be", H1961) — qal jussive, expressing a wish/purpose ("let there be") rather than a simple future statement.
cho.shekh ("darkness", H2822) — masculine singular noun, appearing twice in the verse (lines 14 and 20).
ya.Mesh ("they may feel" / "grope", H4959) — hiphil imperfect with vav, a causative verbal form connected to the second occurrence of choshekh.

What the text says

The verse opens with the standard narrative formula va-yomer Yehovah el-Mosheh ("and Yehovah said to Moses"), introducing direct speech. The command itself consists of the imperative ne.Teh ("stretch out") plus the construct noun ya.de.kha ("your hand"), followed by the prepositional phrase 'al ha.shamayim ("toward the heavens").

The result of this action is expressed through a jussive clause: vi.hi choshekh 'al 'eretz mitzrayim — "and let darkness be over the land of Egypt." The Hebrew then adds a second clause built on the same noun choshekh, now paired with the hiphil verb ya.Mesh (H4959). This root relates to groping or feeling about, so the clause literally describes darkness that "gropes" or is associated with groping — the grammatical construction places the darkness itself as the subject of this hiphil verb, producing a construction not easily rendered word-for-word in translation.

The repetition of choshekh at the end of the verse (rather than a pronoun or connector) is a feature of the Hebrew that translations typically absorb into a single descriptive phrase.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final Hebrew clause (ve.yamesh choshekh) as a noun phrase, ψηλαφητὸν σκότος ("palpable/touchable darkness"), turning the verb into an adjective modifying "darkness" rather than keeping it as a separate clause. The Vulgate instead uses a purpose/result construction, ut palpari queant ("so that they can be touched"), which shifts the sentence into a subordinate clause absent from the Hebrew's paratactic structure of two juxtaposed clauses joined by ve- ("and"). The Hebrew's double use of choshekh is thus consolidated into a single descriptive expression in both the Greek and Latin versions.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.