Exodus 5:23

Summary

Moses tells YHWH that since going to Pharaoh to speak in the divine name, Pharaoh has done harm to the people, and YHWH has not delivered them. The verse pairs a report of Pharaoh's action against Israel with an emphatic statement of divine non-intervention.

Key words

• me'az ("then", H0227B) — the preposition min ("from") prefixed to the adverb creates "from then/ever since," anchoring the timeframe of Moses' mission to Pharaoh.
• hera' ("he has done harm", H7489A) — hiphil (causative) perfect, third person masculine singular; the causative stem marks Pharaoh as the active agent who caused harm to occur, not merely experienced it.
• hatzel ("certainly [to deliver]", H5337) — hiphil absolute infinitive; placed before the finite verb of the same root, this construction in Hebrew normally intensifies the action ("surely deliver").
• hitzalta ("you have delivered", H5337) — hiphil perfect, second person masculine singular, the finite verb paired with the infinitive above; here negated by lo' ("not", H3808), reversing the expected emphatic sense.
• 'ammekha ("your people", H5971A) — noun in construct with the second-person suffix kha; the phrase is repeated at the end of the verse, explicitly naming the object of non-deliverance.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002). The first states what Pharaoh has done: hera' la'am hazzeh — "he has done harm to this people" — using the hiphil of the same root elsewhere used for "evil," marking Pharaoh as the one who actively produced harm. The second clause addresses YHWH directly using the infinitive absolute + finite verb construction: ve-hatzel lo hitzalta ("and to deliver, you have not delivered"). In Biblical Hebrew, an infinitive absolute preceding a finite verb of the same root typically strengthens or confirms the action ("you have surely delivered"). Here, however, the negation lo' intervenes between the infinitive and the finite verb, so the intensifying structure is applied to an action that did not happen — producing a strong statement of complete non-deliverance rather than a simple negative.

The clause closes by repeating 'am ("people", H5971A) as 'ammekha ("your people"), now with the second-person suffix instead of the demonstrative hazzeh ("this") used earlier for the same referent. This shifts the grammatical framing from "this people" (as an external group) to "your people" (as belonging to YHWH), placing responsibility for the outcome on the addressee.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the final phrase as "non liberasti eos" ("you have not freed them"), using the pronoun eos ("them") instead of repeating "your people" as the Hebrew does with 'ammekha. The provided LXX text appears to break off after ἐκάκωσεν ("he did harm/evil"), not showing a rendering of the second clause about non-deliverance, so no comparison can be drawn for that portion from the data given.