Exodus 14:25

Summary

The verse describes YHWH interfering with the pursuing Egyptian chariots by acting on their wheel(s), making the chariots difficult to drive. The Egyptians then declare their intent to flee, stating explicitly that YHWH is fighting on Israel's behalf against them.

Key words

• yasar ("he turned aside", H5493I) — hiphil (causative) narrative verb; the causative stem implies an external agent forcing a wheel to turn/come off, rather than it happening on its own.
• ofan ("wheel of", H0212) — masculine singular construct, paired with plural markevotav ("his/their chariots", H4818, feminine plural construct). A singular "wheel" governing a plural "chariots" is a notable numerical mismatch in the construct chain.
• yenahagehu ("he caused to drive it", H5090A) — piel (intensive) verb with 3ms object suffix hu ("it"); the intensive stem plus the suffix indicates a forced, effortful driving of the object (the wheel/chariot).
• bikhvedut ("with difficulty/heaviness", H3517) — feminine singular abstract noun with preposition bi ("with"); describes the manner of the driving, built from a root associated with "heaviness."
• nilcham ("is fighting", H3898A) — niphal participle, masculine singular; the participle form frames the fighting as an ongoing, present action at the moment of Egypt's speech, not a completed one.

What the text says

The verse opens with three consecutive narrative-vav verbs — yasar, yenahagehu, yomer — forming a tight causal sequence: an action on the wheel, then a forced/heavy driving, then speech. The construct phrase ofan markevotav ("wheel of his chariots") pairs a singular noun with a plural one, a construction the Hebrew allows but which does not map cleanly onto English or other target-language plurals.

The direct speech begins with anusah ("let me flee," H5127), tagged in the morphology as an infinitive form but functioning with first-person volitional force ("let us/me flee") in context. The causal clause introduced by ki ("for," H3588A) explains the flight: YHWH nilcham lahem bemitzrayim — "YHWH is fighting for them, against Egypt." The two prepositional phrases lahem ("for them") and bemitzrayim ("against Egypt") mirror each other, marking beneficiary versus opponent with the same underlying idea of combat.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew yasar ("turned aside/removed") differs sharply from the LXX's synedēsen ("bound together," referring to the axles) and from the Vulgate's subvertit ("overturned"). Similarly, Hebrew bikhvedut ("with difficulty/heaviness") corresponds to LXX meta bias ("with force/violence") and to the Vulgate's in profundum ("into the deep"), each version describing the chariots' impairment through a distinct image — removal, binding, overturning, or sinking.