Exodus 8:4

Summary

The verse lists three targets — "you," "your people," and "all your servants" — upon whom the frogs (ha-tzefarde'im, "the frogs", H6854) will come up. The verb ya'alu ("they will go up", H5927G) governs all three prepositional phrases, describing a single advancing action affecting the addressee, his people, and his officials together.

Key words

• ya'alu ("they will go up", H5927G) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; the imperfect aspect marks the action as future/ongoing, and the plural subject agrees with the following noun ha-tzefarde'im.
• ha-tzefarde'im ("the frogs", H6854) — masculine plural noun with the definite article ha ("the", H9009), marking a specific, already-mentioned group of frogs as the grammatical subject of the verb.
• 'ammekha ("your people", built on H5971A) — construct noun 'am ("people") plus the second-person masculine singular suffix -kha ("your", H9021), forming "your people" as one of the three prepositional objects.
• 'avadeikha ("your servants", H5650) — masculine plural construct noun plus the same suffix -kha, yielding "your servants," the third element in the series.
• u-ve-kha ("and on you", from H9002 + H9003 + H9031) — conjunction plus preposition plus second-person pronominal suffix, opening the list with the direct address "you."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence places all three prepositional phrases — u-vekha ("and on you"), u-ve-'ammekha ("and on your people"), u-ve-khol-'avadeikha ("and on all your servants") — before the verb ya'alu ("they will go up"). This front-loading of the objects, each introduced by the repeated conjunction u ("and", H9002) and preposition ve ("on", H9003), creates a cumulative listing effect: the reader encounters the three targets one by one before reaching the verb that acts upon them. The verb itself appears only once, at the end, governing all three phrases together, and the subject ha-tzefarde'im ("the frogs") follows the verb, closing the sentence.

The construct chains 'am-me-kha ("people of you") and kol-'avadei-kha ("all of the servants of you") show how Hebrew builds possessive relationships through construct nouns bound directly to a pronominal suffix, without a separate word for "your" as in English. The word khol ("all", H3605) modifies specifically "your servants," singling out that the totality applies to that group, while "you" and "your people" appear without such a quantifier.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb ya'alu ("they will go up") is rendered by the LXX as anabēsontai ("they will go up/ascend"), matching the sense of upward movement. The Vulgate instead uses intrabunt ("they will enter"), shifting the image from ascending to entering. The Hebrew and LXX order the three targets as "you, your people, your servants," while the Vulgate lists "you, your people, all your servants," and the given Spanish and English translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) vary the order to "you, your people, your officials/servants," placing "servants/officials" last rather than matching the Hebrew's final position for that phrase.