Exodus 9:25

Summary

The verse describes the hail striking everything in the open fields throughout the land of Egypt — humans, livestock, vegetation, and trees — using three different verbs to describe the destructive action against different categories of objects.

Key words

• va-yakh ("and it struck", H5221) — hiphil narrative form, marking the main sequential action opening the verse; causative sense, "caused to strike."
• ha-barad ("the hail", H1259) — definite noun, the subject performing all three strikes described in the verse.
• hikkah ("it struck", H5221) — same root as yakh, now in perfect form, repeated to introduce the second object (vegetation) after the intervening clause.
• shibber ("it shattered", H7665) — piel (intensive) perfect, a different, more forceful verb than yakh/hikkah, used specifically for the trees.
• kol ("all/every", H3605) — construct noun repeated four times, structuring the verse into distinct categories of what was struck.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built in three movements, each governed by a form of the same core action but distributed across two verb roots. The first movement uses va-yakh ("and it struck", H5221) with ha-barad ("the hail", H1259) as subject, covering "all that was in the field" (kol-'asher ba-sadeh, H3605/H0834A/H7704G), specified further as ranging me-'adam ve-'ad-behemah ("from humankind and unto livestock", H0120G/H0929) — a construction using "from...unto" to indicate an inclusive range from one extreme to the other.

The second movement repeats the same verb root as hikkah ("it struck", H5221), now in perfect aspect rather than narrative vav-form, applied to kol-'esev ha-sadeh ("all the vegetation of the field", H6212/H7704G). This repetition of the nkh root (as yakh and hikkah) creates a structural echo, restating the hail's action before moving to the final and most severe consequence.

The third movement shifts to a different verb, shibber ("it shattered", H7665), in the piel (intensive) stem, applied to kol-'etz ha-sadeh ("every tree of the field", H6086H/H7704G). The piel form intensifies the action beyond simple striking — it denotes breaking or smashing, distinguishing the fate of the trees from that of the vegetation and living beings, which were merely "struck."

Differences between versions

The LXX uses a single verb, ἐπάταξεν ("struck"), for both the hail's action on humans/livestock and on vegetation, then switches to συνέτριψεν ("shattered together") for the trees — paralleling the Hebrew's shift from nkh to shbr. The Vulgate similarly uses percussit ("struck") twice and confregit ("broke completely") once, preserving the same two-verb distinction found in the Hebrew.