Exodus 7:23

Summary

The verse narrates Pharaoh's response after the first plague (water turned to blood): he turns away, returns to his house, and does not take the event to heart. The sentence closes the episode with a note on Pharaoh's internal disposition rather than further action.

Key words

• va-yifen ("and he turned", H6437G) — qal narrative verb form (vayyiqtol), marking a sequential action: "and then he turned."
• va-yavo ("and he went", H0935G) — same narrative form, chained to the previous verb, continuing the sequence of movement: turning, then entering.
• beito ("his house", H1004B + H9023) — noun in construct form with a pronominal suffix, literally "house-of-him," indicating the destination of the movement.
• shat ("he set/placed", H7896K) — qal perfect, denoting a completed (or non-completed, given the negation) state rather than an ongoing narrative action; perfect tense here shifts from the vayyiqtol chain to a summarizing statement.
• libbo ("his heart", H3820A + H9023) — construct noun with suffix, "heart-of-him," the object of the verb shat, forming the idiom "to set one's heart to" something.

What the text says

The verse is built on two grammatical movements. First, two verbs in the narrative (vayyiqtol) form — va-yifen ("he turned") and va-yavo ("he went") — create a tight sequence of physical action: Pharaoh turns and enters his house. This chain uses the same verbal pattern that carries most Biblical Hebrew narrative forward, marking these as consecutive plot events.

The second half breaks this pattern. Instead of a third vayyiqtol, the text shifts to ve-lo shat ("and he did not set"), using the negation lo ("not", H3808) with a qal perfect verb shat. This shift from narrative to perfect form, combined with the negation, moves the focus from external action to an internal, summarizing statement about Pharaoh's disposition. The construct phrase libbo ("his heart") functions as the object of shat, forming the idiom "to set the heart to," here negated. The adverb gam ("also", H1571) paired with la-zot ("to this", H9005 + H2063) intensifies the negation — the heart was not set "even to this," suggesting a cumulative point: this event, like something prior, failed to affect Pharaoh's inner state.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shat libbo ("he set his heart") with epestēsen ton noun ("he applied his mind/understanding"), using nous ("mind") where the Hebrew has lev ("heart"). The Vulgate's apposuit cor ("he applied heart") stays closer to the Hebrew idiom. For gam la-zot ("also to this"), the LXX has oude epi toutō ("nor concerning this"), and the Vulgate has etiam hac vice ("even this time"), interpreting zot ("this") as referring to an occasion or occurrence rather than a general demonstrative "this."