Exodus 9:15
כִּי עַתָּה שָׁלַחְתִּי אֶת־יָדִי וָאַךְ אוֹתְךָ וְאֶֽת־עַמְּךָ בַּדָּבֶר וַתִּכָּחֵד מִן־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
כִּ֤י עַתָּה֙ שָׁלַ֣חְתִּי אֶת־יָדִ֔י וָאַ֥ךְ אוֹתְךָ֛ וְאֶֽת־עַמְּךָ֖ בַּדָּ֑בֶר וַתִּכָּחֵ֖ד מִן־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
νῦν γὰρ ἀποστείλας τὴν χεῖρα πατάξω σε, καὶ τὸν λαόν σου θανατώσω, καὶ ἐκτριβήσῃ ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς·
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Nunc enim extendens manum percutiam te, et populum tuum peste, peribisque de terra.
Si yo hubiera extendido mi mano y los hubiera castigado con enfermedades a ti y a tu pueblo, ya habrías desaparecido del mapa;
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Porque ahora yo extenderé mi mano para herirte á ti y á tu pueblo de pestilencia, y serás quitado de la tierra.
For by this time I could have stretched out My hand and struck you and your people with a plague to wipe you off the earth.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse presents YHWH addressing Pharaoh about a hand extended in judgment, resulting in pestilence upon Pharaoh and his people, and their being cut off from the earth. The Hebrew grammar of this verse — particularly the combination of ki ("for/if") with perfect-tense verbs — creates a well-known ambiguity between a real past/imminent action and a counterfactual construction ("if I had..., you would already be...").
Key words
- ki ("for", H3588A) — a particle that can function as causal ("for"), conditional ("if"), or declarative ("that"). Its sense here depends on how the following perfect verbs are read.
- shalachti ("I stretched out", H7971K) — qal perfect, 1st person. The perfect normally marks completed action, but combined with ki + 'attah ("now"), it can be read either as "I have (now) stretched out" or as part of a counterfactual "if I had stretched out."
- 'attah ("now", H6258) — adverb marking the temporal point of reference for the action; its interaction with the perfect verb is central to the ambiguity.
- 'akh ("I struck", H5221) — hiphil (causative) with narrative vav, continuing the sequence begun by shalachti: the causative stem intensifies the action from "stretching out" to actively "striking."
- tikkached ("you were destroyed/cut off", H3582) — niphal (passive/reflexive) with narrative vav, describing the resulting state of Pharaoh and his people as an effect of the prior actions, without naming an explicit agent.
What the text says
The sentence chains four verbal actions through narrative vav: shalachti ("I stretched out") → 'akh ("I struck," causative) → an implied strike on "your people" via ba-dever ("with the pestilence") → tikkached ("you were cut off," passive). This sequence structurally mirrors a narrative report of completed events. However, the opening ki 'attah ("for/if now") plus the perfect shalachti is a well-documented Hebrew construction that can also function as a counterfactual conditional — meaning the entire chain would then describe what would have happened ("if I had stretched out my hand... you would have been struck... and cut off"), not what has already occurred. The grammatical data alone (perfect tense, particle ki) does not disambiguate between these two readings; both are consistent with the verb forms given.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders the verbs as future actions — πατάξω ("I will strike"), θανατώσω ("I will kill"), ἐκτριβήσῃ ("you will be wiped out") — treating the Hebrew perfects as referring to imminent, not-yet-executed action. The Vulgate follows a similar pattern with percutiam ("I will strike," future). The BSB and SBLIBRE, by contrast, render the clause as counterfactual/conditional ("could have stretched out," "hubiera extendido... ya habrías desaparecido"), treating ki 'attah + perfect as a past-conditional construction. The RV1909 aligns with the LXX/Vulgate future reading ("extenderé... herirte").
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.