Exodus 11:6

Summary

The verse announces that a great cry will arise throughout all the land of Egypt, a cry unprecedented in its intensity and unrepeatable afterward. The sentence uses two comparative clauses to frame this cry as unique in both past and future terms.

Key words

• tze'aqah ("a cry", H6818) — feminine singular noun, the subject of the sentence, denoting an outcry or wail rather than ordinary speech.
• gedolah ("great", H1419A) — feminine singular adjective agreeing with tze'aqah, intensifying the noun it modifies.
• nihyatah ("it has occurred", H1961) — niphal perfect, a passive/reflexive form indicating something that has come to pass; here negated to state that nothing like it has ever happened.
• tosif ("it will repeat", H3254G) — hiphil imperfect, a causative form implying an action that adds or continues; negated to state that such a cry will not happen again.
• kamo ("like", H3644G) appears twice (positions 10 and 15), each time with the suffix hu ("it/his", H9033), forming the comparative phrases "like it."

What the text says

The clause opens with the narrative vav on ve.hayetah ("and it will be", H1961), a qal sequential perfect that continues the chain of prior verses, presenting the cry as a future event within the ongoing narrative sequence. The subject tze'aqah gedolah ("a great cry") is placed in construct relation with kol 'eretz Mitzrayim ("all the land of Egypt", H3605/H0776G/H4714G), meaning the cry spans the entirety of the territory rather than a limited area.

The relative particle 'asher ("which", H0834A) introduces two parallel negated clauses that qualify the cry's uniqueness. In the first, kamohu lo nihyatah ("like it, it has not occurred"), the niphal perfect nihyatah points to a completed state — no comparable cry has ever come into being before this one. In the second, ve-khamohu lo tosif ("and like it, it will not repeat"), the hiphil imperfect tosif points to a future/ongoing aspect — no comparable cry will occur again afterward. The repetition of kamo + hu in both clauses creates a symmetrical structure, framing the cry as singular on both the past and future sides of the timeline.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the second clause with ou gernen ("has not been") and ouketi prostethēsetai ("will no longer be added"), using the verb prostithēmi ("to add") to represent the Hebrew hiphil tosif, which itself derives from a root meaning "to add/increase" — this correspondence is preserved conceptually. The Vulgate uses qualis nec ante fuit, nec postea futurus est ("such as neither was before, nor will be afterward"), collapsing both Hebrew negated clauses into a single comparative construction without repeating a term equivalent to kamohu ("like it") twice as the Hebrew does.