Exodus 13:14

Summary

The verse describes a future scenario in which a son asks his father about the meaning of a ritual observance ("What is this?"), and prescribes the answer the father must give: that Yehovah brought the people out of Egypt "with strength of hand," out of "a house of slaves." The verse is structured as a conditional/temporal clause followed by direct speech.

Key words

• ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, opening formula that projects the scene into future time ("and it will happen that...").
• yish.'a.le.kha ("he will ask you", H7592) — qal imperfect, marking the son's question as a recurring or future possibility, not a single past event.
• ma.Char ("in future time", H4279) — masculine singular noun, literally "tomorrow," here used idiomatically for "in time to come" rather than a literal next day.
• Cho.zek Yad ("strength of hand", H2392/H3027H) — construct chain "strength of hand," an idiomatic expression for forceful action, syntactically bound so that Cho.zek cannot stand alone without Yad.
• ho.tzi.'A.nu ("he brought out us", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) perfect, indicating that Yehovah is the causal agent who made the exodus happen, not merely one who "left" or "went out."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative marker ve-ha.Yah ("and it will be"), followed by the conditional particle ki ("if/that"), which together set up a hypothetical future scene. The verb yish.'a.le.kha is imperfect, so the son's questioning is framed as something that may recur, not a one-time event. The construct chain bin.kha ("son of you") ties the son directly to the addressee through the pronominal suffix.

The father's expected reply is introduced by another sequential perfect, 'a.mar.Ta ("you will say"), continuing the same future-oriented chain begun by ha.Yah. The content of the reply centers on the construct phrase be.Cho.zek Yad ("with strength of hand"), an idiom built from two nouns in construct relationship, functioning adverbially to describe the manner of the action. The main verb of the reply, ho.tzi.'A.nu ("he brought us out"), is in the hiphil stem, which is causative — Yehovah is presented as the one who causes the exodus, not merely someone who exits Egypt. The final phrase, mi.Beit 'a.va.Dim ("from a house of slaves"), is another construct chain, describing Egypt not by name in this final clause but by its function as a place of servitude.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Cho.zek Yad ("strength of hand") as "ἐν χερὶ κραταιᾷ" (Ἐν χερὶ κραταιᾷ — "with a strong/mighty hand"), inverting the Hebrew construct order (hand + strength-adjective vs. Hebrew's strength-of + hand). The Vulgate follows a similar pattern with "in manu forti" ("with a strong hand"). Both LXX and Vulgate render mi.Beit 'a.va.Dim ("from a house of slaves") with abstract nouns — LXX "ἐξ οἴκου δουλίας" ("out of a house of slavery") and Vulgate "de domo servitutis" ("from the house of servitude") — shifting from the Hebrew's concrete plural noun "slaves" ('a.va.Dim) to an abstract noun "slavery."