Exodus 8:24

Summary

The verse reports that Yehovah carried out what had been announced: a massive swarm entered the house of Pharaoh and the houses of his servants, and throughout the land of Egypt the land was ruined because of the swarm.

Key words

• va-Ya'as ("and he did", H6213A) — qal narrative form of the verb, marking the direct execution of a prior word by the subject Yehovah.
• a-Ro ("a swarm", H6157) — masculine singular noun, appears twice in the verse (once indefinite, once with the article he-'aRo, "the swarm").
• ka-Ved ("massive", H3515) — masculine singular adjective modifying a-Ro, describing the intensity or weight of the swarm.
• ti-sha-Chet ("it was ruined", H7843) — niphal (passive) imperfect, third feminine singular, agreeing with ha-'Aretz ("the land"); the niphal stem marks the land as undergoing the ruin rather than causing it.
• mi-pe-Nei ("because of", H6440I) — construct plural of "face," used here as a compound preposition indicating causation ("from the face of").

What the text says

The sentence opens with a short clause, va-Ya'as Yehovah Ken ("and Yehovah did so"), using the narrative vav construction typical of Biblical Hebrew sequential storytelling: one wayyiqtol verb after another advances the plot. This confirms the enactment of a previously stated event. A second wayyiqtol, va-yaVo' ("and it came"), introduces the subject a-Ro ka-Ved ("a massive swarm") as what arrives, using the directional he suffix on Beita ("house of," H1004B) to indicate motion toward Pharaoh's house.

The listing of locations — Beita far'oh ("house of Pharaoh"), veit 'avaDav ("house of his servants," construct chain with pronominal suffix "his"), and ve-khol 'Eretz Mitzrayim ("and all the land of Egypt") — extends the reach of the swarm from a specific royal house to the entire territory through repeated construct chains marked by "and."

The final clause shifts grammatical construction: tishaChet ha-'Aretz mipeNei he-'aRo uses the niphal verb tishaChet ("it was ruined"), placing the land in the grammatical role of undergoing an action rather than performing one. The causal phrase mipeNei ("because of," literally "from the face of") attributes the ruin to he-'aRo ("the swarm"), now marked with the definite article, referring back to the swarm already introduced.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders a-Ro ("swarm," H6157) as κυνόμυια ("dog-fly"), a specific insect identification not explicit in the Hebrew noun, which simply denotes a "swarm" without specifying species. The Vulgate similarly renders it as musca ("fly"), following the same interpretive tradition as the LXX. The Hebrew a-Ro itself carries no lexical component meaning "fly" or "dog-fly."