Exodus 7:25

Summary

The verse marks the passage of seven days following the event in which Yehovah struck the River (the Nile). It functions as a temporal notice closing one episode before the narrative continues.

Key words

• va-yimmale ("and it was completed", H4390) — narrative vav plus a niphal verb, expressing that the seven days were passively "filled up" or "completed," not that someone actively completed them.
• shiv'at ("seven of", H7651) — a construct-form cardinal number, meaning it must attach to the following noun yamim to form "seven of days."
• yamim ("days", H3117G) — masculine plural noun completing the construct chain begun by shiv'at.
• acharei ("after", H0310A) — here marked as a construct form, linking the time notice to the infinitive clause that follows.
• ha-kot ("striking", H5221) — hiphil infinitive of the causative verb "to strike," used with a following subject (Yehovah) and object (ha-ye'or) to express "the striking of the River by Yehovah."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on yimmale (H4390), a niphal form indicating that the seven days "were filled" or "became complete" — the subject undergoing completion is shiv'at yamim ("seven days"), not an agent completing them. This passive/reflexive niphal shifts the grammatical focus away from any actor and onto the days themselves as the entity reaching fullness.

The phrase shiv'at yamim is a construct chain: shiv'at (H7651, construct form of "seven") governs yamim (H3117G, "days"), producing "seven of days," i.e., "seven days" as a unit functioning as the subject of the niphal verb.

The temporal clause that follows, acharei ha-kot Yehovah et-ha-ye'or, uses acharei (H0310A) marked as a construct form leading into an infinitive clause. The verb ha-kot (H5221) is a hiphil infinitive, "the striking," which takes Yehovah (H3068G) as its subject and et-ha-ye'or (H0853 + H2975G, with the definite article H9009) as its direct object, marked explicitly by the object marker et. This infinitive construction ("after Yehovah's striking of the River") is a common way in Biblical Hebrew to express a subordinate temporal clause without a finite verb, condensing subject, verb, and object into a single grammatical unit governed by the preposition acharei.

Differences between versions

The LXX (ἀνεπληρώθησαν) and Vulgate (Impletique sunt) both render the niphal yimmale with passive verb forms ("were fulfilled/completed"), matching the Hebrew's passive construction. The Hebrew ha-ye'or ("the River") is translated in the BSB as "the Nile," specifying the river by name, while the Hebrew, LXX (τὸν ποταμὸν, "the river"), and Vulgate (fluvium, "the river") use a generic term without naming it explicitly.