Exodus 9:12
וַיְחַזֵּק יְהוָה אֶת־לֵב פַּרְעֹה וְלֹא שָׁמַע אֲלֵהֶם כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהוָה אֶל־מֹשֶֽׁה׃ ס
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיְחַזֵּ֤ק יְהוָה֙ אֶת־לֵ֣ב פַּרְעֹ֔ה וְלֹ֥א שָׁמַ֖ע אֲלֵהֶ֑ם כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר דִּבֶּ֥ר יְהוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶֽׁה׃ ס
ἐσκλήρυνεν δὲ κύριος τὴν καρδίαν Φαραώ, καὶ οὐκ εἰσήκουσεν αὐτῶν, καθὰ συνέταξεν Κύριος.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Induravitque Dominus cor Pharaonis, et non audivit eos, sicut locutus est Dominus ad Moysen.
Pero Yehová hizo que el faraón se pusiera terco y no les hizo caso, tal como Yehová se lo había advertido a Moisés.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y Jehová endureció el corazón de Faraón, y no los oyó; como Jehová lo había dicho á Moisés.
But the LORD hardened Pharaoh ’s heart, and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said to Moses. The Seventh Plague: Hail
✦ What the text says
Summary
Exodus 9:12 reports that Yehovah made Pharaoh's heart strong, resulting in Pharaoh's refusal to listen to Moses and Aaron. The verse closes the sixth plague narrative by noting that this outcome matches what Yehovah had previously told Moses.
Key words
- y.cha.Zek ("he made strong", H2388G) — piel (intensive) verb with narrative vav, indicating an intensified causative action performed by the subject that follows.
- Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — proper name functioning as the grammatical subject of the strengthening action.
- lev ("heart of", H3820A) — construct noun, grammatically bound to the following word "Pharaoh," forming the phrase "heart of Pharaoh."
- sha.Ma' ("he listened", H8085G) — qal perfect verb, marking a completed action, negated by Lo' ("not", H3808).
- di.Ber ("he had said", H1696G) — piel perfect verb, referring to a prior completed speech act by Yehovah, introduced by the relative particle 'a.Sher ("as", H0834D).
What the text says
The verse opens with the narrative vav construction va-y.cha.Zek, which sequences this action as following directly from the prior plague narrative. The verb y.cha.Zek is in the piel stem, an intensive verbal form, with Yehovah as its explicit grammatical subject. The direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) introduces the object phrase lev par.'Oh ("heart of Pharaoh"), where lev stands in construct state, grammatically linked to "Pharaoh" as the possessor.
The second clause, joined by the conjunction ve. ("and"), presents Lo' sha.Ma' — a negated qal perfect verb, indicating a completed act of not-listening. The phrase 'a.le.Hem ("to them") uses a preposition with a third-person masculine plural suffix, referring back to unnamed prior parties (contextually Moses and Aaron, though not named in this verse).
The final clause uses the relative particle ka.'a.Sher ("just as") to introduce a comparison between the present outcome and an earlier divine statement. The verb di.Ber is piel perfect, marking Yehovah's prior speech act as completed before the events just narrated. The subject Yehovah appears again explicitly, followed by the preposition 'el ("to") governing mo.Sheh ("Moses"), specifying the recipient of that earlier speech.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders y.cha.Zek ("he made strong") with ἐσκλήρυνεν ("he hardened"), a term denoting rigidity rather than strength, while the Vulgate's induravit ("he hardened") follows a similar sense. The Hebrew sha.Ma' ("he listened") is negated to mean "did not listen," which the LXX and Vulgate render as "did not hear/heed" (εἰσήκουσεν / audivit), a close semantic match. The Hebrew di.Ber ("he had said") appears in the LXX as συνέταξεν ("he had ordered/commanded"), which shifts the nuance from speech to directive, differing from the Vulgate's locutus est ("he had spoken"), which more closely parallels the Hebrew verb of speaking.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.