Exodus 15:9

Summary

Exodus 15:9 records the boast of the pursuing enemy (identified in context as Pharaoh's forces) as a rapid sequence of first-person declarations of pursuit, capture, plunder, and violence. The verse uses six short clauses without connecting particles, producing a staccato rhythm that mimics breathless, escalating aggression.

Key words

• 'oyev ("[the] enemy", H0341) — qal participle, masculine singular; describes the speaker as "the one pursuing/hating," an ongoing characterization rather than a fixed title.
• 'erdof ("I will pursue", H7291) — qal imperfect, first person; opens the chain of boasts, denoting an action projected into the near future.
• 'achallek ("I will divide", H2505A) — piel (intensive) imperfect; the intensive stem underscores thorough, deliberate distribution of shalal ("plunder", H7998).
• timla'Emo nafshi ("it will be full of them, my soul", H4390 + H5315L) — qal imperfect feminine ("she") with the noun nefesh ("self/soul") as subject and a 3rd person masculine plural suffix as object; the soul, not "I," is grammatically the one becoming full.
• torishemo yadi ("it will dispossess them, my hand", H3423H + H3027H) — hiphil (causative) imperfect feminine, with yad ("hand") as the grammatical subject performing the dispossessing action.

What the text says

The Hebrew presents seven verbs in rapid succession with no conjunctions (asyndeton), each in a short two- or three-word clause. This creates an accumulating, breathless cadence appropriate to a triumphant taunt. Notably, in two clauses the grammatical subject is not "I" but a body part or faculty: nafshi ("my soul/self") is the subject of timla'Emo ("she will be full of them"), and yadi ("my hand") is the subject of torishemo ("she will dispossess them"). The Hebrew idiom frames the soul as the entity that "fills up" with the plundered people, and the hand as the entity that "dispossesses" them, rather than a straightforward "I will do this to them."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders timla'Emo nafshi as ἐμπλήσω ψυχήν μου ("I will fill my soul"), shifting from the Hebrew's construction where nefesh is the subject to one where "I" is the subject and "soul" is the direct object. For 'ariq charbi ("I will draw/empty my sword", H7324), the LXX gives ἀνελῶ τῇ μαχαίρῃ μου ("I will kill with my sword"), replacing the drawing-of-the-sword image with a killing action. For torishemo yadi ("it will dispossess them, my hand", H3423H), the LXX has κυριεύσει ἡ χείρ μου ("my hand will rule/dominate"), while the Vulgate reads "interficiet eos manus mea" ("my hand will kill them") — both diverge from the Hebrew sense of dispossessing or displacing.