Exodus 7:15

Summary

Exodus 7:15 records instructions for Moses to go to Pharaoh in the morning, encountering him as he goes out to the water, and to wait for him at the bank of the Nile with the staff that had been changed into a snake.

Key words

• yotze ("going out", H3318) — qal participle, masculine singular; describes Pharaoh's action as an ongoing, in-progress movement ("the one who is going out"), not a completed act.
• ha-mayma — the noun mayim ("water", H4325) carries the directional he (H9011) suffix, meaning "toward the water," indicating motion in a direction rather than a static location.
• nitzavta ("you will stand", H5324) — niphal sequential perfect; continues the narrative chain begun by the imperative lekh, functioning as a further command ("and you shall stand") rather than a simple past report.
• nehpakh ("it was changed", H2015) — niphal perfect, describing a completed transformation; the passive/reflexive niphal stem indicates the staff underwent change without naming the agent.
• tiqqach ("you will take", H3947) — qal imperfect, expressing a future/ongoing instruction, the final command in the sequence.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of commands to Moses, opening with the bare imperative lekh ("go", H1980) and continuing through a sequence of verb forms that Hebrew narrative syntax links together: the sequential perfect nitzavta ("and you shall stand") and the imperfect tiqqach ("you shall take") both depend grammatically on the initial imperative, forming one continuous set of directives rather than separate statements.

The scene of Pharaoh's movement is expressed with the participle yotze ("going out", H3318), which in Hebrew grammar depicts an action as unfolding rather than finished — Pharaoh is in the process of going toward the water when Moses is to intercept him. The directional he attached to mayim ("water") reinforces this sense of movement toward a goal, a nuance not always preserved when translated as a static "to the water."

The clause about the staff uses a relative construction, 'asher nehpakh le-nachash ("which was changed into a snake"), where the niphal perfect nehpakh marks the transformation as a completed prior event, referred to as background information before the main command tiqqach ("you shall take").

Differences between versions

The LXX adds the explicit pronoun autos ("he") with ekporeuetai ("he goes out"), making Pharaoh's identity as subject explicit, where the Hebrew participle yotze leaves the subject implied by context. The Vulgate renders the directional ha-mayma as ad aquas ("to the waters," plural), while the Hebrew and LXX ("τὸ ὕδωρ") use a singular form for "water." The LXX also renders the relative clause about the staff with a passive participle (strapheisan, "having been turned"), whereas the Hebrew uses a full relative clause with the finite niphal verb nehpakh.