Exodus 9:23

Summary

The verse describes Moses stretching his staff toward the sky, after which Yehovah produces thunder and hail, fire moves down to the ground, and Yehovah causes hail to fall on the land of Egypt. The sentence is built as a chain of narrative actions following one another.

Key words

• va-yet ("and he stretched out", H5186) — qal narrative form, marking the first sequential action of the verse: Moses's own gesture.
• matte-hu ("his staff", H4294G + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, identifying the specific object stretched out, the same staff used earlier in the plague narrative.
• natan ("he gave", H5414M) — qal perfect, a completed-action verb (not narrative vav) describing Yehovah's giving of qolot ("thunder claps", H6963I) and barad ("hail", H1259).
• va-tihalakh ("and it went", H1980G) — qal narrative, feminine subject agreeing with esh ("fire", H0784), describing the movement of fire toward the ground.
• va-yamter ("and he rained down", H4305) — hiphil (causative) narrative form: Yehovah is the causer who makes hail fall, distinct from a simple qal "to rain."

What the text says

The Hebrew verse is structured as four linked clauses, each advancing the action: Moses stretches out the staff (va-yet), then a shift occurs with va-Yehovah natan — here the perfect verb natan rather than a narrative form marks Yehovah's giving of thunder and hail as a distinct, almost summarizing statement rather than a strict "next step" in the chain. The third clause returns to narrative sequence with va-tihalakh esh artzah, "and fire went toward the ground," using the directional suffix -ah on aretz ("ground", H0776G) to indicate motion toward that location. The final clause uses the hiphil form va-yamter, built on the root also seen in matar ("rain"), explicitly marking Yehovah as the causative agent who "makes hail rain" (literally "hails hail," since the object barad repeats the verb's root sense) upon eretz Mitzrayim, "the land of Egypt" (construct: "land of Egypt").

The repetition of barad ("hail") in both the giving clause and the raining clause, together with the double occurrence of YHWH as subject, gives the Hebrew a structure of escalation: first hail is "given" among other phenomena, then specifically "rained down" causatively onto Egypt's land.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders matteh ("staff") with χεῖρα ("hand"), differing from the Hebrew's explicit "his staff." Where the Hebrew has va-tihalakh esh artzah ("and fire went to the ground"), the LXX has διέτρεχεν τὸ πῦρ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ("the fire ran across the earth"), and the Vulgate adds "discurrentia fulgura" ("lightning running about"), an interpretive expansion not present as a separate word in the Hebrew text. The LXX also adds πᾶσαν ("all") before "land of Egypt," a word with no corresponding Hebrew element in this verse.