Exodus 8:26

Summary

Moses answers Pharaoh that it would not be "right" to sacrifice within Egypt, because the offerings acceptable to Yehovah are considered an abomination by the Egyptians. He warns that performing these sacrifices in front of Egyptian eyes risks provoking them to stoning.

Key words

• nakhon ("[is] established", H3559) — niphal participle, passive/stative sense: "fitting, correct, established," here negated by lo to mean "it is not right/proper."
• to'avat ("abomination of", H8441) — feminine singular noun in construct state, twice used to link "abomination" to mitsrayim ("Egypt", H4714), forming the phrase "the abomination of Egypt."
• ki ("for", H3588) — a particle that can function as causal ("because") or conditional ("if/that"); its dual range affects how the clause connects to what precedes.
• hen ("here!", H2005) — an interjection ("behold!"), but positioned before a verb it can carry a conditional force ("if indeed...").
• yiskelunu ("will they stone?", H5619) — qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural with 1st person plural suffix "us"; grammatically a plain statement ("they will stone us"), not marked as a question by any interrogative particle.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with lo nakhon la'asot ken — "not established to do so" — a stative construction expressing unsuitability rather than moral prohibition. The reason clause introduced by ki explains why: to'avat mitsrayim nizbach — "the abomination of Egypt we will sacrifice." The construct chain to'avat mitsrayim is ambiguous in Hebrew: it can be read as "what Egypt regards as an abomination" (the object of Egyptian disgust) or "the abomination [that] Egypt [practices]." The verb nizbach ("we will sacrifice") is repeated twice, framing the whole warning around the act of sacrificing.

The second occurrence of the phrase is introduced by hen, an interjection literally meaning "behold," here functioning almost as a conditional marker ("if indeed we sacrifice..."). The direct object marker 'et precedes the second to'avat mitsrayim, making it explicitly the object of the second nizbach. The final clause, velo yiskelunu ("and they will not stone us"), is grammatically a plain negative statement in Hebrew — there is no interrogative particle — yet the logical flow of the passage (an implied "if... then") leads some renderings to present it as a rhetorical question.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hen with ἐὰν γάρ ("for if"), and the Vulgate similarly uses quod si ("but if"), both making explicit the conditional sense only implied by the Hebrew interjection hen. Regarding the final clause, the Hebrew velo yiskelunu is a direct statement ("and they will not stone us"), while RV1909, BSB, and SBLIBRE render it as a rhetorical question ("will they not stone us?"), reflecting an interpretive choice not marked grammatically in the Hebrew text itself.