Exodus 17:13

Summary

The verse reports that Joshua defeated Amalek and its people "to the mouth of the sword," a Hebrew idiom indicating destruction by armed combat. The sentence uses standard narrative sequence (vav + verb) to mark this as the next event in the story, following directly from the preceding battle account.

Key words

• vayyachalosh ("he defeated / he weakened", H2522) — qal narrative form; the verbal root refers to becoming weak or prostrate, so the verb frames the outcome as Amalek being rendered weak/defeated rather than annihilated outright.
• 'et ("", H0853) — untranslated marker indicating the direct object of the verb; appears twice, once before Amalek and once before ammo ("his people"), signaling two distinct objects of the same verbal action.
• ammo ("his people", H5971A + H9023) — construct noun with 3ms suffix, meaning "his people," referring back to Amalek; grammatically distinguishes the collective forces from the leader/nation-name itself.
• lefi ("to [the] mouth of", H6310H) — construct noun form of "mouth," used here idiomatically with charev to form the standard Hebrew expression for being struck down by weapon.
• charev ("[the] sword", H2719) — feminine singular noun completing the construct phrase "mouth of the sword," the conventional idiom for death by blade in narrative Hebrew.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a simple narrative chain: the vav-prefixed verb vayyachalosh opens the clause, followed by the subject Yehoshua, then two objects marked by 'et—first Amalek (the collective/national entity) and then ve'et ammo ("and his people"), a phrase with a possessive suffix referring back to Amalek. This distinguishes between Amalek as a named entity and its "people" as the fighting body, though both are struck by a single verbal action.

The final phrase, lefi-charev ("to the mouth of the sword"), is a fixed idiomatic construction in Biblical Hebrew, using the construct noun fi ("mouth of") governing charev ("sword"). This phrase functions adverbially to describe the manner of defeat—by the blade/edge of a weapon—rather than being a literal reference to an anatomical "mouth." The verb root of chalash (H2522) denotes "weakening" or "prostrating," a nuance not always distinguishable from more generic "defeat" verbs in translation.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the verb as fugavit ("put to flight"), emphasizing rout/flight rather than the Hebrew's "weakened" (chalash). The BSB translates ammo ("his people") as "his army," an interpretive rendering of the general term "people," and omits the literal "mouth of the sword" idiom, replacing it with "with the sword." The RV1909 and SBLIBRE preserve the idiom more closely as "a filo de espada" ("to the edge of the sword"), retaining the construct sense of the Hebrew original.