Exodus 12:30

Summary

The verse describes Pharaoh, his officials, and all the Egyptians rising during the night, followed by a great outcry throughout Egypt, because there was no house without someone dead.

Key words

• va-yYaqom ("and he arose", H6965B) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine, marking the sequential action that opens the verse.
• layLah ("night", H3915) — masculine singular noun functioning adverbially to specify when Pharaoh rose.
• va-tteHi ("and it was", H1961) — qal narrative verb, third person feminine, agreeing with the feminine noun tze'aKah that follows, introducing the resulting event.
• tze'aKah geDolah ("a great cry", H6818 + H1419A) — feminine singular noun modified by a feminine singular adjective, describing the intensity of the collective reaction.
• 'ein ("there not", H0369) — repeated twice (words 20 and 23), each functioning as a construct-type negator that structures the double negative clause "no house where there was not a dead one."

What the text says

The sentence opens with a narrative chain: va-yYaqom ("and he arose") followed by the subject Par'oh ("Pharaoh"), then layLah ("night") specifying the time. The pronoun hu' ("he") reinforces Pharaoh as the primary subject before the compound subject expands with ve-khol-'avaDav ("and all his servants") and ve-khol-Mitzrayim ("and all Egypt"), both using the construct pattern khol + noun ("all of...") to indicate totality.

The second clause begins with another narrative verb, va-tteHi ("and it was"), agreeing grammatically in gender with its subject tze'aKah ("a cry"), which is feminine. The adjective geDolah ("great") agrees with this noun in gender and number, intensifying the description. The prepositional phrase be-Mitzrayim ("in Egypt") locates the event.

The final clause is introduced by ki (H3588A), here functioning causally ("for"), explaining why the cry was great. The construction uses 'ein ("there not") twice: first stating "there was not a house," then embedding a relative clause with 'asher ("where") and a second 'ein ("there not... there"), followed by the participle met ("dead", H4191), which functions substantivally as "a dead one." This double negative structure — "no house where there was not a dead one" — grammatically emphasizes universality without using a positive quantifier like "every."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders be-Mitzrayim ("in Egypt") more expansively as "ἐν πάση γῇ Αἰγύπτῳ" ("in all the land of Egypt"), adding "πάση" ("all/every"), which is not present in the Hebrew phrase itself at this point. The Vulgate's "neque enim erat domus in qua non jaceret mortuus" uses the verb jaceret ("was lying"), interpreting the Hebrew participle met ("dead") with an added sense of physical position not explicit in the Hebrew text, which simply states existence of a dead person there.