Exodus 10:29

Summary

Moses responds to Pharaoh's preceding statement, confirming that Pharaoh has spoken correctly, and then declares that he (Moses) will not continue to see Pharaoh's face. The verse closes the dialogue between the two figures with a firm statement about future non-encounter.

Key words

• ken ("right", H3651A) — adverb affirming the correctness of what precedes; functions as a short response formula.
• dibarta ("you have spoken", H1696G) — piel perfect, second person masculine; the piel stem here carries an intensive nuance to the act of speaking, and the perfect aspect marks it as a completed statement Pharaoh has just made.
• osif ("I will repeat", H3254G) — hiphil imperfect, first person; the causative (hiphil) form of the root meaning "to add" is used idiomatically to express repetition of an action.
• re'ot ("to see", H7200G) — qal infinitive construct; paired with osif, it forms the verbal phrase expressing "to not do again."
• panekha ("your face", H6440H + H9021) — masculine plural noun in construct state with a second-person suffix; plural form of "face" is standard in Hebrew even when referring to a single face.

What the text says

The verse divides into two parts. First, ken dibarta ("rightly you have spoken") is Moses' brief confirmation of something Pharaoh has just said, using an adverb plus a piel perfect verb — the perfect aspect situates Pharaoh's speech as a completed event that Moses is now affirming.

The second part contains a Hebrew idiom: lo osif od re'ot panekha, literally "I will not add still to see your face." Hebrew commonly expresses "I will not do X again" by combining the hiphil imperfect of the root yasaph ("to add," here as osif) with an infinitive construct of the main verb (re'ot, "to see"). This construction does not use a separate adverb for "again" in the main verb itself — the repetition is built into the "add" + infinitive structure, reinforced further by the word od ("again/still"). The object of "seeing" is panekha, a construct plural noun ("face of you"), which in Hebrew grammar is plural in form even though it refers to one face — this is standard usage and carries no special emphasis on multiplicity.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew and the Vulgate both present Moses as the grammatical subject of an active verb "to see" (re'ot / videbo), meaning Moses will not see Pharaoh's face. The LXX, however, renders the clause with a passive verb, ophthesomai ("I will be seen/I will appear"), reversing the grammatical relationship: instead of "I will not see your face," the LXX has "I will no longer appear to you, before your face" (ouketi ophthesomai soi eis prosōpon). The Hebrew and Vulgate agree in voice and structure; the LXX diverges by using a passive construction with a different verb.