Exodus 12:29

Summary

The verse narrates the moment the tenth plague strikes Egypt: at midnight, Yehovah kills every firstborn in the land, spanning the full social range from Pharaoh's firstborn heir to the firstborn of a prisoner, and extends even to the firstborn of livestock.

Key words

• va.yiHi ("and it was", H1961) — narrative qal verb marking the onset of a new event in the story sequence; the classic Hebrew storytelling opener "and it happened."
• hiKah ("he struck", H5221) — hiphil (causative) perfect verb; the causative stem signals that Yehovah actively causes the striking, not merely that it occurs.
• bekhOr ("firstborn", H1060) — masculine singular noun, repeated four times in construct form (bekhor... bekhor... bekhor... bekhor...), each time governing a different possessor (Egypt, Pharaoh, the prisoner, livestock), creating a chain of construct phrases that structures the verse's merism.
• ha.yoShev ("who sat", H3427) — qal participle with definite article, describing Pharaoh's ongoing state ("the one sitting") rather than a completed action, contrasting with the perfect verb hiKah.
• 'aSher ("who/that", H0834A) — relative particle introducing a subordinate clause that specifies the prisoner's location, "who [was] in the house of the pit."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the temporal formula va.yiHi ba.chaTzi ha.Layelah ("and it was in the middle of the night"), a construction that halts the narrative flow to mark a decisive turning point before the main clause begins. The main clause then places Yehovah as subject of the hiphil perfect hiKah ("he struck"), a verb form that in the hiphil stem conveys direct causation — Yehovah himself is the agent producing the effect, not an intermediary force.

The object of the striking, khol-bekhOr ("every firstborn"), is immediately narrowed by a chain of construct phrases (bekhor... bekhor... bekhor... bekhor behemah) that moves from the general ("every firstborn in the land of Egypt") to two extreme points on a social scale: mibbekhor Par'oh hayoshev al-kis'o ("from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne") to 'ad bekhor hashevi 'asher beveit habbor ("to the firstborn of the prisoner who is in the house of the pit"). This min...'ad ("from...to") structure functions as a merism, expressing totality by naming its two poles — the highest and lowest social positions — rather than listing every intermediate case. The final clause, vekhol bekhor behemah ("and every firstborn of livestock"), extends this totality beyond the human sphere using the same construct pattern bekhor, reinforcing that the same word for "firstborn" applies uniformly across social rank and species.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders beveit habbor ("in the house of the pit/cistern", H1004B + H0953A) as ἐν τῷ λάκκῳ ("in the pit/well"), collapsing the Hebrew's two-noun construct phrase "house of the pit" into a single noun. The Vulgate translates the same phrase as in carcere ("in prison"), an interpretive rendering rather than a literal "house of the pit." The LXX also adds ἕως ("until") a second time before παντὸς κτήνους ("of all cattle"), producing a three-part from...to...to structure not present in the Hebrew, which simply appends vekhol bekhor behemah ("and every firstborn of livestock") as a final coordinated clause with ve ("and", H9002).