Exodus 8:23

Summary

The verse reports divine speech announcing that a peduth ("ransom", H6304) will be set between two peoples — the speaker's own people and the addressee's people — and that this distinguishing sign will occur "tomorrow." The sentence closes the divine warning with a temporal marker and a demonstrative pointing to a specific 'ot ("sign", H0226G).

Key words

• sam.Ti ("I will make", H7760H) — qal sequential perfect, 1st person; this verb form continues a chain of prior verbal actions in the narrative, marking what the speaker will do next rather than a simple future statement.
• fe.Dut ("a ransom", H6304) — feminine singular noun, serving as the direct object of samti; it names the thing being "set" or "placed."
• bein ("between", H0996G) — construct form appearing twice (lines 4 and 8), producing the paired structure "between X and between Y," a doubling not required in English but standard in Biblical Hebrew for marking separation between two parties.
• 'am.Mi / 'am.Me.kha ("my people" / "your people", H5971A) — the same noun 'am in construct form, each carrying a different pronominal suffix (-i "my", H9020; -kha "your", H9021), which creates the contrastive pair at the center of the clause.
• ha.'Ot ha.Zeh ("this sign", H0226G + H2088) — the noun 'ot carries the definite article ha- (H9009) and is followed by the demonstrative zeh ("this", H2088), also preceded by the article, anchoring the sign to a specific, already-referenced event.

What the text says

The clause opens with the narrative vav (H9001) attached to samti, a sequential perfect that carries the discourse forward from preceding speech. The direct object peduth is placed between two people-groups through the repeated preposition bein... u-bein — literally "between my people and between your people" — a construction that in Hebrew emphasizes the boundary or separation between the two parties named by the construct nouns 'ammi and 'ammekha. The second half of the verse shifts to a temporal clause: le-machar ("for tomorrow", H4279) fronts the imperfect verb yihyeh ("it will happen", H1961), giving prominence to the timing before naming what will occur — ha'ot hazeh, "this sign," with both article and demonstrative pointing back to something already introduced in the surrounding narrative.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew noun peduth (H6304) denotes "ransom." The LXX renders it as diastolē ("distinction, separation"), and the Vulgate uses divisionem ("division"). Among the modern renderings, RV1909 ("redención") follows the "ransom" sense closer to the Hebrew root, while BSB ("distinction") and SBLIBRE ("diferencia") follow the separation/distinction sense found in the LXX and Vulgate.