Exodus 14:18
וְיָדְעוּ מִצְרַיִם כִּי־אֲנִי יְהוָה בְּהִכָּבְדִי בְּפַרְעֹה בְּרִכְבּוֹ וּבְפָרָשָֽׁיו׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וְיָדְע֥וּ מִצְרַ֖יִם כִּי־אֲנִ֣י יְהוָ֑ה בְּהִכָּבְדִ֣י בְּפַרְעֹ֔ה בְּרִכְבּ֖וֹ וּבְפָרָשָֽׁיו׃
καὶ γνώσονται πάντες οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι κύριος, ἐνδοξαςομένου μου ἐν Φαραὼ καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἅρμασιν καὶ ἵπποις αὐτοῦ.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Et scient Ægyptii quia ego sum Dominus cum glorificatus fuero in Pharaone, et in curribus atque in equitibus ejus.
Y cuando yo haya mostrado mi gloria contra el faraón y sus tropas, los egipcios sabrán que yo soy Yehová.”
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y sabrán los Egipcios que yo soy Jehová, cuando me glorificaré en Faraón, en sus carros, y en su gente de á caballo.
The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I am honored through Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse states that Egypt will come to know that the speaker is Yehovah (H3068G) at the moment when he is glorified through Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen. It continues the narrative sequence begun in the preceding verses, describing the consequence of an action still to occur.
Key words
- ya.de.'U ("they will know", H3045) — qal sequential perfect (vav + qatal), continuing the chain of future events from the prior verse; grammatically it reports what will happen as a result of what precedes.
- hi.ka.ve.D ("gain honor / be honored", H3513G) — niphal infinitive construct with 1st person suffix (-i, "my"), giving the sense "in my being honored/glorified." The niphal stem marks the verb as passive or reflexive rather than a plain active "to honor."
- 'a.Ni ("I", H0589) — independent personal pronoun, placed before Yehovah to form the emphatic self-identification formula "I [am] Yehovah."
- rikh.B ("chariot", H7393G) and fa.ra.Sha ("horsemen", H6571B) — both nouns appear in construct form with a possessive suffix ("his"), linking them to Pharaoh as the possessor.
What the text says
The clause opens with the narrative ve ("and", H9001) attached to ya.de.'U, forming a sequential perfect that ties this statement to the ongoing narrative sequence rather than presenting an isolated fact. The subject mitz.Ra.yim ("Egypt", H4713) is grammatically singular but functions as a collective referring to the nation.
The subordinate clause ki- 'a.Ni Yah.weh ("that I [am] Yehovah") uses the independent pronoun 'a.Ni for emphasis, a common construction in self-identification statements. The following phrase be.hi.ka.ve.D-i is built on the niphal infinitive of the root כבד, which in this stem denotes being honored or glorified rather than actively glorifying oneself — the grammatical voice is passive/reflexive, not causative-active.
The three prepositional phrases be.far.'Oh, be.rikh.B-o, u.ve.fa.ra.Sha-v ("by/through Pharaoh," "by/through his chariots," "and by/through his horsemen") are parallel in structure, each governed by be ("by/through", H9003), listing the means through which the glorification described by the niphal verb takes place.
Differences between versions
The niphal form hi.ka.ve.D-i is rendered differently across versions: the LXX uses a middle/passive participle (ἐνδοξαςομένου, "being glorified"), the Vulgate uses a passive perfect subjunctive (glorificatus fuero, "I shall have been glorified"), and BSB follows this passive sense ("when I am honored"). By contrast, RV1909 renders it reflexively ("cuando me glorificaré," "when I glorify myself"), and SBLIBRE shifts to an active causative sense ("cuando yo haya mostrado mi gloria," "when I have shown my glory"), neither of which reflects the passive/reflexive niphal voice found in the Hebrew.
The LXX also adds πάντες ("all") before "the Egyptians," a quantifier not present in the Hebrew mitz.Ra.yim, which names the nation without an explicit "all."
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.