Exodus 8:14

Summary

The verse describes the aftermath of gathering dead animals (referred to by the plural pronoun "them") into piles, and the resulting stench that spread over the land. The Hebrew text uses a doubled noun construction to intensify the sense of accumulation.

Key words

• yitzberu ("they piled up", H6651) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine plural, continuing the sequential storyline ("and then they piled up").
• chomarim ("heaps", H2563B) — masculine plural noun, repeated twice in immediate succession (chomarim chomarim), a grammatical doubling that functions distributively, meaning "heap upon heap" or "in many separate heaps."
• tiv'ash ("it stank", H0887) — qal narrative verb, third person feminine singular, agreeing with the feminine subject ha'aretz.
• ha'aretz ("the land", H0776G) — feminine singular noun with definite article, the subject of the stinking.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on yitzberu, continuing a chain of sequential actions from the preceding context. The verb is plural, indicating a collective, unspecified group performing the piling — the text does not name the subject explicitly in this verse; it is carried by otam ("them", H0853 + H9038), a direct object suffix referring back to something plural from earlier in the narrative.

The most distinctive grammatical feature is the repetition chomarim chomarim — the same masculine plural noun stated twice in a row. This doubling is a known Hebrew pattern for expressing distribution or multiplicity ("heaps and heaps," i.e., numerous separate piles), rather than a single large heap. This nuance of repeated plural nouns conveying distributive plurality is not something a single translated noun like "heaps" or "montones" can fully replicate; it requires either duplication in translation or an interpretive gloss such as "countless heaps."

The second clause is joined by another narrative vav on tiv'ash, a feminine singular verb agreeing with ha'aretz ("the land"), the definite noun serving as grammatical subject. The clause states plainly that the land stank, following from the accumulation of piled matter.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the doubled Hebrew chomarim chomarim with the same distributive doubling in Greek, θιμωνιὰς θιμωνιάς ("heaps, heaps"), preserving the repetition. The Vulgate instead uses a single phrase, in immensos aggeres ("into immense heaps"), collapsing the Hebrew repetition into an intensifying adjective rather than reproducing the doubling. The Vulgate's verb computruit ("it rotted/decayed") diverges semantically from the Hebrew tiv'ash ("it stank") and the LXX ὤζεσεν ("it smelled/reeked"), shifting the sense from an odor to physical decay.