Exodus 9:32

Summary

The verse states that, unlike other crops destroyed in the hail plague, the chittah ("wheat", H2406) and kussemet ("spelt", H3698) were not struck, because these grains ripen later in the season than the crops previously destroyed.

Key words

• chittah ("wheat", H2406) — feminine singular noun with definite article ha (H9009), naming the first unharmed crop.
• kussemet ("spelt", H3698) — feminine singular noun, also definite, paired with wheat as the second unharmed crop.
• nukku ("they were struck", H5221) — pual (intensive passive) perfect, third person plural; the passive voice indicates the crops were acted upon (by hail) rather than acting themselves, and the perfect marks the action as completed.
• ki ("for/because", H3588A) — subordinating particle introducing the causal clause that explains why the grains survived.
• afilot ("late crops", H0648) — feminine plural adjective, describing the nature of these grains as late-developing, agreeing in gender and number with the subjects wheat and spelt.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence has two parts joined by the particle ki ("for", H3588A), which introduces a causal explanation. The first part names the two surviving crops — chittah ("wheat", H2406) and kussemet ("spelt", H3698) — both feminine singular nouns joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002) and marked with the definite article ha (H9009), indicating these are the specific, known crops of the region being discussed. The verb nukku ("they were struck", H5221) is in the pual stem, an intensive passive form, showing that the subject (wheat and spelt) received the action of striking rather than performing it; the negation lo ("not", H3808) placed before the verb denies this action occurred to them.

The second clause, introduced by ki, gives the reason: afilot ("late crops", H0648), a feminine plural adjective, is predicated of these grains using the pronoun hennah ("they", H2007), also feminine plural, agreeing grammatically with chittah and kussemet taken together. The adjective form itself carries the sense of "late" or "delayed" in growth cycle, explaining textually why the timing of the hailstorm did not affect these particular plants — they had not yet developed to the vulnerable stage that other crops had reached.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders afilot hennah ("they are late crops", H0648) as ὄψιμα γὰρ ἦν ("for they were late"), using a neuter plural adjective agreeing with the Greek nouns for wheat and spelt, which are grammatically different genders than in Hebrew. The Vulgate similarly reads "quia serotina erant" ("because they were late"), using a neuter plural form matching Latin "triticum" and "far." Both versions preserve the causal sense of ki (H3588A) but adapt the pronoun/adjective agreement to their own grammatical gender systems, which differs from the Hebrew feminine plural construction.