Exodus 8:17

Summary

The verse narrates the execution of the gnat plague: Aaron stretches out his hand with his staff, strikes the dust of the ground, and the dust becomes gnats affecting both humans and livestock throughout all the land of Egypt.

Key words

• va.ya'asu ("they did", H6213A) — qal narrative form (3rd m. pl.), opening the verse with a report that the prior command was carried out ("and they did so").
• yad ("hand", H3027G) — construct noun with pronominal suffix -o ("his"), forming yado ("his hand"), the body part Aaron extends.
• matteh ("staff", H4294G) — construct noun with suffix -hu ("his"), forming mattehu ("his staff"), the instrument used together with the hand.
• vayakh ("he struck", H5221) — hiphil (causative) narrative form, indicating Aaron causes the striking action against the dust.
• khinnam / khinnim ("gnat[s]", H3654) — the noun appears first in singular collective form with the article (ha-kinnam, "the gnats/gnat-swarm") and later in plural (khinnim), describing the result of the transformation.
• 'afar ha'aretz ("dust of the ground", H6083 + H0776H) — construct chain repeated twice, first as the object struck, then as the totality ("all the dust of the ground") that becomes gnats.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs: va-ya'asu ("they did"), va-yet ("he stretched out"), va-yakh ("he struck"), va-tehi ("it was"), each advancing the action in sequence. The subject shifts: the unspecified "they" who "did so" in the opening clause, then Aaron individually performing the stretching and striking, then the impersonal "it was" describing the transformation of dust into gnats. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) appears twice, marking "his hand" and "the dust of the ground" as the grammatical objects of the verbs of stretching and striking.

The phrase 'et yado ve-mattehu ("his hand with his staff") combines the hand and staff as a single instrument of action, both nouns bearing possessive suffixes referring to Aaron. The verb vayakh is in the hiphil (causative) stem, marking Aaron as the causer of the striking. The clause va-tehi ha-kinnam ba-'adam u-va-behemah states that the gnat-swarm came to be "on humankind and on livestock," using the singular collective ha-kinnam with the definite article, while the following clause repeats the statement using the plural khinnim without the article, in the perfect (completed) verb form hayah ("it was/became"), emphasizing the completed result: "all the dust of the ground became gnats."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew opens with a distinct clause, vaya'asu-khen ("and they did so", referring to Aaron and possibly others carrying out a prior instruction), which the LXX does not render as a separate clause with a plural subject; it begins directly with "Aaron stretched out" (exeteinen... Aarōn), omitting an explicit rendering of "they did so" as a separate action. The Vulgate preserves this opening as Feceruntque ita ("And they did so"), matching the Hebrew structure more closely than the LXX at this point. The Hebrew's twofold repetition of khinnam/khinnim ("gnat[s]") — first singular collective, then plural — is rendered by the LXX with the plural sknīphes ("gnats/lice") in both instances, and by the Vulgate with sciniphes in both instances, without preserving the grammatical number shift found in the Hebrew.