Exodus 9:19

Summary

Moses is instructed to tell Pharaoh to send word so that livestock and anything left in the field be brought to safety, because whatever remains outside — whether human or animal — will be struck by hail and die. The verse combines two imperatives at the start and a chain of narrative future/sequential verbs describing the coming disaster.

Key words

• shelach ("send", H7971G) — qal imperative, 2nd person masculine singular; the initial command directed at Pharaoh to act.
• ha'ez ("bring to refuge", H5756) — hiphil imperative; the causative form marks that Pharaoh must cause the livestock to be secured, not merely move it himself.
• yimmatze' ("it will be found", H4672) — niphal imperfect; passive/reflexive form describing what remains in the field without naming an agent.
• ye'asef ("it will be gathered", H0622) — niphal imperfect, passive; parallels yimmatze' in describing the fate of anything not brought indoors.
• yarad ("it will come down", H3381) and metu ("they will die", H4191) — qal sequential perfects (vav + perfect continuing the narrative chain), linking the hail's descent directly to death as consequence.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve'attah ("and now/therefore", H6258), marking a logical consequence drawn from what precedes. Two imperatives follow in sequence — shelach ("send") and ha'ez (hiphil, "bring to refuge") — both addressed to Pharaoh in the second person masculine singular, forming a double command rather than a single compound action. The object clause specifies miqnekha ("your livestock", H4735) and, through the relative particle 'asher ("that", H0834A), "all that is yours in the field."

The middle section shifts to a conditional description using niphal (passive) imperfects: yimmatze' ("it will be found") and ye'asef ("it will be gathered"), both without a stated agent, emphasizing the state of being left exposed or brought inside rather than who performs the action. The directional suffix -ah on bayta ("house", H1004B, with H9011) indicates motion "toward the house," specifying direction rather than simple location.

The final clause uses the narrative vav construction with sequential perfects yarad ("it will come down") and metu ("they will die"), a chain typical of Biblical Hebrew for expressing a sequence of future events tied to the preceding condition: hail descends, then death follows.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the double Hebrew imperative shelach... ha'ez with a single compound expression, κατάσπευσον συναγαγεῖν ("hasten to gather"), merging two commands into one. Where the Hebrew ye'asef... habaytah specifies gathering "toward the house," the LXX uses εἰσέλθῃ εἰς οἰκίαν ("enter into a house"), while the Vulgate's nec congregata de agris ("nor gathered from the fields") omits any mention of a house, referring instead to the fields as the point of departure.