Exodus 9:30

Summary

Moses tells Pharaoh that he knows Pharaoh and his officials still do not fear Yehovah God. The sentence fronts the subject ("you and your servants") before the verb "I know," creating emphasis, and uses an idiomatic construction involving "face" to express the concept of fearing God.

Key words

• 'atah ("you", H0859A) — the independent personal pronoun is placed at the very front of the clause, before the verb, creating topical emphasis on Pharaoh (and his servants) as the subject under discussion.
• yada'ti ("I know", H3045) — qal perfect, first person singular; expresses a completed cognitive state ("I have come to know / I know") rather than an ongoing process.
• terem ("not yet", H2962) — a temporal particle marking that an expected action has not occurred up to the present moment.
• tir'un ("you fear", H3372H) — qal imperfect, second person plural, carrying a paragogic nun (H9013), an added final letter that intensifies or gives solemn/emphatic weight to the verb form without changing its core meaning.
• mipnei ("because of" / literally "from the face of", H6440I) — construct plural of "face" preceded by the preposition min ("from"); an idiomatic Hebrew expression meaning "before" or "in the presence of," used here to describe the object of fear.

What the text says

The clause structure places 'atah va'avadeikha ("you and your servants") at the head of the sentence, ahead of the main verb yada'ti ("I know"). This word order is not the default verb-subject pattern common in Biblical Hebrew narrative; fronting the pronoun and its coordinated noun phrase draws attention to the identity of those being addressed, contrasting them with whatever precedes in the surrounding discourse.

The subordinate clause introduced by ki ("that", H3588A) contains terem ("not yet") combined with the imperfect verb tir'un ("you fear"), a standard Hebrew construction for expressing an action that has not yet taken place. The imperfect verb here carries a paragogic nun, an extra letter attached to the plural form that adds emphasis or a heightened, almost formal tone to the statement, though this nuance does not have a direct one-word equivalent in translation.

The phrase mipnei YHWH Elohim uses the noun panim ("face") in construct form after the preposition min ("from"), an idiom that functions adverbially to mean "before" or "in the presence of." Literally, the phrase reads "from the face of Yehovah God," expressing the idea of standing before, and thus fearing, the divine presence rather than a generic abstract fear.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mipnei YHWH Elohim simply as τὸν θεόν ("God"), omitting the idiomatic "face" language and the divine name Yehovah, combining the phrase into a single object of the verb "fear." The Vulgate similarly gives Dominum Deum ("the Lord God") without reproducing the "face" idiom literally. The BSB translation adds "our" before "God" ("the LORD our God"), a pronoun not present in the Hebrew text, which reads Elohim without a possessive suffix.