Exodus 3:9

Summary

The verse reports God's declaration that the outcry of the Israelites has reached him, and that he has personally witnessed the oppression the Egyptians are inflicting on them. It combines a statement about the cry arriving with a statement about direct observation of the affliction.

Key words

• tza'aqat ("cry of distress of", H6818) — feminine singular noun in construct state, linking directly to "sons of Israel"; construct form means it must be read together with the following noun as "the cry of the sons of Israel."
• ba'ah ("it has come", H0935G) — qal perfect, third person feminine singular, agreeing with the feminine noun tza'aqat; the perfect aspect presents the arrival of the cry as a completed event.
• ra'iti ("I have seen", H7200G) — qal perfect, first person singular; parallels ba'ah in aspect, marking the seeing as likewise a completed act, not an ongoing process.
• lochatzim ("[are] oppressing", H3905) — qal active participle, masculine plural, referring to "Egypt" (Mitzrayim) treated as a plural agent; the participle expresses an action presented as continuous or characteristic rather than a single completed event.
• lachatz ("oppression", H3906) — masculine singular noun, the direct object marked by 'et (H0853), naming the condition that was seen.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve-'atah hinneh ("and now, behold"), a combination of the temporal adverb H6258 and the interjection H2009 that shifts attention to a present, immediate situation. The first clause, "the cry of the sons of Israel has come to me," uses the construct chain tza'aqat benei-Yisra'el to bind the noun "cry" tightly to its source, and the qal perfect ba'ah frames the cry's arrival as a completed fact at the moment of speaking, followed by 'elai ("to me," H0413 + suffix H9030).

The second clause is joined by ve-gam ("and also," H9002 + H1571), adding a second, distinct completed act: ra'iti ("I have seen"), also qal perfect first person. Its object is ha-lachatz ("the oppression"), marked by the object marker 'et (H0853) and the definite article ha (H9009). This object is further specified by a relative clause introduced by 'asher ("which," H0834A): "which Egypt is oppressing them" — here the verb switches to a qal active participle, lochatzim, describing the Egyptians' action as ongoing rather than as a single finished event, in contrast to the two perfect verbs that frame the verse (the cry "has come," "I have seen"). The word "Egypt" (Mitzrayim) functions as the subject of a plural participle even though the proper name itself has no plural morphology marked here.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tza'aqat with kraugē ("cry") and uses hēkei ("has come/arrived") for ba'ah, matching the Hebrew perfect sense. For lachatz ("oppression"), the LXX uses thlimmon, and for the participle lochatzim it uses thlibousin ("they oppress"), a finite present verb rather than a participle, slightly shifting the continuous/participial nuance of the Hebrew into a straightforward present-tense clause. The Vulgate similarly renders the relative clause with qua...opprimuntur ("by which they are oppressed"), a passive construction differing from the Hebrew's active participle with Egypt as subject.