Exodus 10:4

Summary

The verse opens Yehovah's warning to Pharaoh through Moses: if Pharaoh persists in refusing to let the Israelite people go, locusts will be brought into his territory the next day. The sentence is built as a conditional clause followed by an emphatic declaration of imminent divine action.

Key words

• ki 'im (H3588B/H0518B) — the combined conditional particles function as "if... then" or "unless," introducing the protasis of the conditional sentence.
• ma'En ("refusing", H3986) — piel participle, denoting an ongoing or characteristic state of refusal rather than a single completed act.
• shalEach ("to send away/let go", H7971H) — piel infinitive construct, complementing ma'En to specify what is being refused: "refusing to let go."
• hinNi ("here I am", H2005+H9040) — interjection hinneh with 1st person suffix, an emphatic self-presentation marker often introducing a declaration about to take effect.
• meVi' ("about to bring", H0935P) — hiphil participle, a causative form expressing imminent or near-future action ("I am bringing / about to bring").

What the text says

The verse divides into two parts joined without a coordinating conjunction: the conditional clause (ki 'im ... 'ammi) and the consequence (hinneni ... bigvulekha). The condition uses a participle, ma'En, rather than a finite verb, which in Biblical Hebrew often conveys a durative or habitual sense — Pharaoh's refusal is framed as an ongoing posture, not a single past refusal. This participle is paired with the infinitive shalEach, forming the standard construction "refusing to send/let go," with 'ammi ("my people," from 'am, H5971A, plus the 1st person suffix) as its object, marked by the untranslated object marker 'et.

The consequence clause opens with hinneni, a construction combining the presentative hinneh with a pronominal suffix, which grammatically foregrounds the speaker and signals that what follows is about to happen imminently. This is reinforced by the hiphil participle meVi', which in Hebrew often functions as a near-future or "about to" tense — distinct from a simple imperfect "I will bring." The time marker machar ("tomorrow") and the locative phrase bigvulekha ("in your territory," from gevul, H1366H, construct plus 2nd person suffix) complete the clause, specifying both when and where the locusts will arrive.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a temporal phrase not present in the Hebrew — ταύτην τὴν ὥραν αὔριον ("this hour tomorrow") — expanding on the single Hebrew word machar ("tomorrow"). The LXX also inserts πολλὴν ("many/much") to describe the locusts, an adjective absent from the Hebrew, where 'arbeh ("locust," H0697) appears without modification. The Vulgate renders the object of refusal with the pronoun "eum" ("him") rather than an explicit equivalent of 'ammi ("my people"), differing from the LXX's τὸν λαόν μου, which corresponds more directly to the Hebrew noun-plus-suffix construction.