Exodus 9:14

Summary

Exodus 9:14 reports YHWH's warning to Pharaoh through Moses: this time all his plagues will be directed not only against Pharaoh but against his officials and his people, so that Pharaoh may recognize that there is no one comparable to YHWH in the whole earth.

Key words

• sho.Le.ach ("[am] about to send", H7971G) — qal participle, expressing an action in progress or imminent, not a simple future; conveys that the sending is already underway or certain to occur very soon.
• ba.Pa.am ha.Zot ("at the time, this", H6471) — noun with article and demonstrative, marking a specific, singular occasion ("this time") as distinct from prior instances.
• ma.ge.fo.Ta-i ("plagues-my", H4046) — feminine plural noun in construct with 1st-person suffix, indicating multiple distinct plagues belonging to the speaker.
• 'el-li.be.Kha ("to your heart", H3820A) — preposition plus noun with 2nd-person masculine suffix; the plagues are directed "to" or "into" the heart, not merely against the person in a general sense.
• 'ein ka.Mo.ni ("there is not like me", H3644G) — negative existential particle plus preposition with 1st-person suffix, forming a fixed idiom of incomparability.

What the text says

The verse opens with the subordinating particle ki ("for"/"that", H3588A), followed immediately by the temporal marker ba-Pa'am ha-Zot, which isolates "this time" as a turning point compared to previous plagues. The subject 'ani ("I", H0589) is followed by the participle sho.Le.ach, a grammatical form that in Biblical Hebrew often signals near-future or ongoing action rather than a completed or simple future event — the sending is presented as already set in motion. The object phrase 'et-kol-magefotai ("all my plagues") uses the construct chain kol...magefotai to present the plagues as a totality belonging to the speaker.

The destination of the plagues is marked by three parallel prepositional phrases: 'el-libekha ("to your heart"), u-va'avadeikha ("and on your servants"), u-ve'ammekha ("and on your people"). The first phrase differs from the other two in preposition ('el vs. be), and it specifies "heart" rather than simply "you," a detail the grammar preserves but which general translations often collapse into "against you."

The purpose clause ba'avur teda ("in order that you may know") uses the jussive form teda', expressing intended result. The final clause, ki 'ein kamoni be-kol-ha'aretz, employs the negative existential 'ein with the suffixed preposition kamoni, an idiomatic construction asserting incomparability across "all the earth" (kol-ha'aretz).

Differences between versions

The Hebrew 'el-libekha ("to your heart") is rendered literally in the LXX (εἰς τὴν καρδίαν σου) and the Vulgate (super cor tuum), but the BSB and SBLIBRE translations render this simply as "against you"/"contra ti," omitting the "heart" image present in the source text. The LXX also renders magefotai ("my plagues", H4046) with τὰ συναντήματά μου, a term closer to "misfortunes" or "mishaps" than the more specific Hebrew "plagues."