Exodus 7:11

Summary

Exodus 7:11 reports that Pharaoh summoned his wise men and sorcerers, and that the magicians of Egypt reproduced the same act performed by Moses and Aaron, using their own enchantments. The verse uses two occurrences of the adverb gam ("also", H1571) to emphasize both Pharaoh's response and the magicians' ability to replicate the sign.

Key words

• va-yiqra ("and he summoned", H7121G) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine singular; the narrative vav links this action directly to the preceding events as the next step in sequence.
• chakhamim ("wise men", H2450) — masculine plural adjective, one of the two groups Pharaoh calls, paired with mekhashefim by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002).
• mekhashefim ("sorcerers", H3784) — piel participle, masculine plural; the piel stem marks an intensive or characteristic activity, describing them as habitual practitioners of this craft rather than using a simple verbal form.
• chartummei ("magicians of", H2748) — masculine plural construct noun, grammatically bound to Mitzrayim ("Egypt", H4714G), forming the phrase "magicians of Egypt."
• lahatei-hem ("their enchantments", H3814 + H9028) — masculine plural construct noun with third-person masculine plural suffix ("their"), specifying the means (be-, "by", H9003) by which the magicians acted.

What the text says

The verse divides into two narrative clauses, each opened by a vav-consecutive verb (va-yiqra, "and he summoned"; va-ya'asu, "and they did"), which is the standard Hebrew mechanism for advancing sequential action in narrative prose. In the first clause, Pharaoh (Par'oh, H6547J) is the subject, and the adverb gam ("also", H1571) attached to his name signals that his action parallels or responds to something prior in the account. He calls two groups, joined by ve-: the chakhamim ("wise men") and the mekhashefim ("sorcerers"), the latter grammatically a piel participle rather than a plain noun, framing sorcery as an ongoing practiced activity.

The second clause repeats the adverb gam before the pronoun hem ("they", H1992), stacking two markers of "also/they too" that reinforce that the magicians' action mirrors a preceding one. The subject is specified appositionally as chartummei Mitzrayim ("magicians of Egypt"), a construct phrase. The instrumental phrase be-lahatei-hem ("by their enchantments") uses a construct noun with a possessive suffix to indicate the means employed, and the clause closes with the adverb ken ("thus", H3651C), which indicates that the result matched the model already established.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chakhamim and mekhashefim as σοφιστάς ("sophists/wise men") and φαρμακούς ("drug-users/sorcerers"), and it names the second group in the following clause as ἐπαοιδοὶ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ("enchanters of the Egyptians") where the Hebrew has chartummei Mitzrayim ("magicians of Egypt"). The Vulgate translates lahatei-hem ("their enchantments") with the double phrase "per incantationes ægyptiacas et arcana quædam" ("through Egyptian incantations and certain secret things"), expanding one Hebrew construct noun into two Latin terms not present as separate lexical units in the Hebrew text.