Exodus 23:28

Summary

The verse continues a divine promise: God will send ha-tzir'ah ("the hornet", H6880) ahead of the addressee, and this hornet will drive out three named peoples — the Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites — from his path. The verb chain marks this as a continuation of the preceding narrative sequence.

Key words

• tzir'ah ("hornet", H6880) — feminine singular noun with definite article; the single agent that God sends.
• gershah ("it will drive out", H1644G) — piel stem (intensive action), sequential perfect, 3rd person feminine singular; the feminine subject matches tzir'ah, meaning grammatically it is the hornet itself, not the addressee, who performs the driving out.
• lefaneicha ("before you", H6440G) — plural construct noun panim ("face") + pronominal suffix, governed by the preposition le- ("to/toward"); describes the hornet's position as going ahead of the addressee.
• millefaneicha ("from before you", H6440G) — the same construct noun and suffix, but prefixed with mi- ("from"); describes the removal of the nations away from the addressee's presence.
• chivi / kena'ani / chiti (H2340, H3669A, H2850) — gentilic nouns, masculine singular, each naming a people group, each marked with the object particle 'et (H0853) and definite article ha- (H9009).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two linked clauses joined by sequential perfects (ve-shalachti … ve-gershah), a construction that carries forward a chain of divine actions begun earlier in the passage: "and I will send… and it will drive out…" The subject of the first verb is God (1st person), but the subject of the second verb, gershah, is grammatically feminine singular, agreeing with tzir'ah ("hornet") rather than with the 2nd-person addressee. This means the Hebrew text presents the hornet as the acting agent that expels the three peoples, not the addressee acting through the hornet.

A further nuance appears in the repetition of the noun panim ("face") with two different prepositions: lefaneicha ("before you," H6440G with le-) positions the hornet ahead of the addressee, while millefaneicha ("from before you," H6440G with mi-) marks the direction of removal — the nations are pushed away from that same position. The same noun-plus-suffix form is reused with a different prefix to express two distinct spatial relations within one verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) pluralizes the insect as σφηκίας ("hornets/wasps") and lists four peoples instead of three, adding Ἀμορραίους ("Amorites") before Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites — a name not present in the Hebrew list of this verse. The LXX also renders the driving-out verb as ἐκβαλεῖς ("you will drive out"), a 2nd-person form, where the Hebrew gershah is 3rd-person feminine singular. The Vulgate similarly uses a plural crabrones ("hornets") with the relative qui fugabunt ("who will drive out"), matching the LXX's plural subject rather than the Hebrew's singular tzir'ah.