Exodus 7:13

Summary

The verse reports that Pharaoh's heart became strong/hardened and that he did not listen to Moses and Aaron, adding that this occurred exactly as Yehovah had previously spoken.

Key words

• va-yyechezaq ("and it was strong", H2388G) — qal narrative verb; the vav-consecutive form links this event directly to the preceding scene (the staff-serpent sign) as its immediate consequence.
• lev ("heart of", H3820A) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be joined to what follows (Par'oh); the construct chain "heart of Pharaoh" is the subject of the strengthening.
• shama' ("he listened", H8085G) — qal perfect, denoting a completed, simple action of listening (or failing to), here negated by lo' ("not", H3808).
• dibber ("he had said", H1696G) — piel perfect of the root for "speak"; the piel stem carries an intensified or emphatic nuance of speaking compared to the simple qal.
• ka'asher ("as", H0834D + H9004) — compound of preposition "just" and relative particle "as/that", forming the comparative clause "just as Yehovah had spoken."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative vav attached to yechezaq, a qal form indicating that the subject itself ("the heart of Pharaoh") became strong — the verb is intransitive, describing a state that came upon the heart rather than an action Pharaoh performs on his heart. The construct phrase lev Par'oh ("heart of Pharaoh") functions as a single grammatical unit, the noun lev depending on the proper name that follows it.

The second clause, introduced by ve-lo', uses the qal perfect shama' to state a completed non-action: he did not listen. The prepositional phrase 'alehem ("to them") with the third-person plural suffix refers back to Moses and Aaron, though their names are not repeated in this verse.

The final clause, ka'asher dibber Yehovah, uses the piel perfect dibber, which carries a stronger connotation of "declaring" than the plain qal "to say" would. This clause functions adverbially, comparing the present event of Pharaoh's non-listening to a statement Yehovah had made earlier in the narrative — the perfect aspect placing that prior speech before the current moment.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-yyechezaq ("it was strong") with κατίσχυσεν ("prevailed/grew strong"), consistent with the Hebrew's intransitive sense. However, for ka'asher dibber Yehovah ("as Yehovah had said"), the LXX uses καθάπερ ἐνετείλατο ("just as he commanded"), where ἐνετείλατο conveys "commanded" rather than the more neutral "spoke" of the Hebrew dibber. The Vulgate's præceperat ("had commanded/ordered") follows this same shift toward a directive sense, diverging from the Hebrew's simple verb "to speak."