Exodus 8:6

Summary

The verse narrates Aaron extending his hand over the waters of Egypt, after which the frog(s) come up and cover the land of Egypt. It closes the second plague sequence with three consecutive narrative actions: stretching, rising, covering.

Key words

• va-yYet ("and he stretched out", H5186) — qal narrative form, opening the sequence with Aaron's action.
• yado ("his hand", H3027G) — noun in construct with the pronominal suffix -o ("his"), forming "his hand" as the object of the stretching.
• ta'al ("it went up", H5927G) — qal narrative, feminine singular, agreeing with the following subject.
• ha-tzefarde'a ("the frog", H6854) — feminine singular noun with definite article; despite being singular in form, it functions as a collective referring to frogs as a mass/species.
• tekhas ("it covered", H3680) — piel narrative, feminine singular, an intensive stem indicating a thorough or complete covering action.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of three wayyiqtol (narrative) verbs, each introduced by the vav H9001, producing a tight cause-and-effect sequence: Aaron stretches out (va-yYet) his hand (yado) over the waters of Egypt (mei mitzrayim, construct chain "waters of Egypt"); then the frog (ha-tzefarde'a) goes up (va-ta'al); then it covers (va-tekhas) the land of Egypt (eretz mitzrayim, another construct chain). The grammatical subject of the second and third verbs is ha-tzefarde'a, grammatically singular and feminine, matching the feminine singular verbs ta'al and tekhas — the Hebrew treats "frog" as a collective noun standing for the whole mass of frogs, rather than using a plural form. The piel stem of tekhas ("covered") carries an intensive nuance, suggesting a covering that is thorough or complete rather than partial, though the specific verb itself does not name the causer directly — the subject remains the singular collective "frog."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew singular collective tzefarde'a is rendered as a plural in most translations (English "frogs," Spanish "ranas"), since the collective sense does not carry over grammatically into these languages. The Vulgate follows this pattern with the plural ranae. The LXX text given here shows an unusual doubling: it first states "ἀνήγαγεν τοὺς βατράχους" ("he brought up the frogs," plural) and then adds "ἀνεβιβάσθη ὁ βάτραχος" ("the frog went up," singular), combining both plural and singular renderings of the Hebrew collective in sequence. The LXX also reads "ἐπὶ τὰ Αἰγύπτου" ("over the [things] of Egypt") without an explicit word for "waters," whereas the Hebrew mei mitzrayim explicitly names "the waters of Egypt."