Exodus 17:11

וְהָיָה כַּאֲשֶׁר יָרִים מֹשֶׁה יָדוֹ וְגָבַר יִשְׂרָאֵל וְכַאֲשֶׁר יָנִיחַ יָדוֹ וְגָבַר עֲמָלֵֽק׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וְהָיָ֗ה כַּאֲשֶׁ֨ר יָרִ֥ים מֹשֶׁ֛ה יָד֖וֹ וְגָבַ֣ר יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְכַאֲשֶׁ֥ר יָנִ֛יחַ יָד֖וֹ וְגָבַ֥ר עֲמָלֵֽק׃

Greek (Septuagint)

καὶ ἐγίνετο ὅταν ἐπῆρεν Μωυσῆς τὰς χεῖρας, κατίσχυεν ὅταν δὲ καθῆκεν τὰς χεῖρας, κατίσχυεν Ἀμαλήκ.

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

Cumque levaret Moyses manus, vincebat Israël: sin autem paululum remisisset, superabat Amalec.

Spanish

Y resulta que, mientras Moisés mantenía los brazos en alto, los israelitas ganaban la batalla; pero cuando los bajaba, ganaban los amalecitas.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Y sucedía que cuando alzaba Moisés su mano, Israel prevalecía; mas cuando él bajaba su mano, prevalecía Amalec.

English

As long as Moses held up his hands, Israel prevailed; but when he lowered them, Amalek prevailed.

✦ What the text says

Summary

The verse describes a recurring pattern during the battle against Amalek: whenever Moses raised his hand, Israel gained the advantage, and whenever he lowered it, Amalek gained the advantage. The Hebrew grammar marks this as a repeated, ongoing correlation rather than a single event.

Key words

ha.Yah ("it was", H1961) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), opening the sentence and signaling narrative continuation from the previous verses.
ya.Rim ("he lifted up", H7311A) — hiphil (causative) imperfect: the causative stem indicates Moses actively causing his hand to rise; the imperfect aspect after ka.'a.Sher ("just when/as often as", H9004+H0834D) gives a repeated or habitual nuance — "as often as he would lift."
ya.D + o ("his hand", H3027G + H9023) — singular noun in construct with a pronominal suffix, appearing twice, each time in the singular ("his hand," not "hands").
ga.Var ("it prevailed", H1396) — qal sequential perfect, repeated twice (for Israel and for Amalek), marking the resulting state each time the condition in the ka'asher clause was met.
ya.Ni.ach ("he gave rest / let down", H5117) — hiphil imperfect from the root meaning "to rest," here causative: Moses "caused [his hand] to rest," i.e., lowered it.

What the text says

The sentence is built on two mirrored conditional-temporal clauses, each introduced by ka.'a.Sher ("just when/according to when," H9004+H0834D) followed by a hiphil imperfect verb (ya.Rim, ya.Ni.ach), and each resolved by a sequential perfect (ga.Var, "it prevailed"). This alternation of imperfect (in the temporal clause) and perfect (in the main clause) is a classic Biblical Hebrew pattern for expressing repeated or habitual action in past narrative — not "when he lifted his hand [once]" but "every time he lifted his hand." The hiphil stem in both ya.Rim and ya.Ni.ach emphasizes that Moses is the causative agent controlling the position of his hand, rather than the hand moving on its own.

Both occurrences of "hand" use the singular ya.D ("hand", H3027G) with a third-person singular suffix, referring consistently to one hand, not both.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew consistently uses the singular ya.D ("his hand," H3027G+H9023). The LXX renders this with the plural τὰς χεῖρας ("the hands"), and modern translations following that tradition (BSB "his hands," SBLIBRE "los brazos") likewise use a plural or generalized "arms/hands," diverging from the Hebrew singular. The Vulgate's manus is morphologically ambiguous between singular and plural in Latin, but is rendered as plural by SBLIBRE's Spanish gloss "brazos." Additionally, where the Hebrew has ya.Ni.ach ("he gave rest," H5117, hiphil of "to rest"), the LXX uses καθῆκεν ("he let down/lowered"), a different verbal image (descent rather than cessation/rest) though conveying the same narrative outcome.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.