Exodus 9:6

Summary

The verse reports that Yehovah carried out the announced event on the following day: all the livestock of Egypt died, while none of the livestock belonging to the Israelites died. The sentence is structured as a narrative report followed by a contrastive clause.

Key words

• va-i.Ya.'as ("and he did", H6213A) — qal narrative form (vayyiqtol) of "to do/make"; the narrative vav plus the verb signals the next event in the story sequence, marking that the deed follows directly from prior speech/promise.
• ha-da.Var ha-Zeh ("the thing/word, this", H1697I + H2088) — definite noun with demonstrative, "this thing," pointing back to something previously stated in the narrative; the double definite article + demonstrative construction emphasizes a specific, already-identified matter.
• kol mik.Neh mitz.Ra.yim ("all livestock of Egypt", H3605 + H4735 + H4713) — construct chain: kol ("all") governs mikneh ("livestock of"), itself in construct with Mitzrayim ("Egypt"), producing "all the livestock of Egypt" as a single bound phrase.
• lo'-met 'e.Chad ("not it-died one", H3808 + H4191 + H0259) — negation lo' placed before the perfect verb met ("died"), with the cardinal 'echad ("one") following; the perfect aspect (completed action) contrasts with the narrative vayyiqtol forms used earlier, marking a summarizing statement rather than a sequential event.

What the text says

The verse opens with two narrative (vayyiqtol) verbs — va-i.Ya.'as ("and he did") and va-i.Ya.mot ("and it died") — which carry the main storyline forward in sequence: Yehovah acts, then the livestock dies. The object of the first verb is marked by 'et (H0853, untranslated direct object marker) and specified as ha-da.Var ha-Zeh ("this thing"), a phrase using both the definite article and a demonstrative pronoun, which in Hebrew narrative typically refers back to something already mentioned in the discourse rather than introducing new information.

The second half of the verse shifts from the vayyiqtol chain to a construction with lo' + the perfect verb met ("died"). This break in verbal form (from narrative to perfect) sets apart the statement about Israel's livestock as a distinct, summarizing contrast rather than a new sequential event. The construct chains kol mikneh Mitzrayim ("all the livestock of Egypt") and mikneh benei Yisra'el ("the livestock of the sons of Israel") are grammatically parallel, both built on the noun mikneh ("livestock") in construct state, which structurally underlines the symmetry of the comparison between the two groups.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders da.Var ("thing", H1697I) as ῥῆμα ("word/matter"), while the Vulgate uses verbum ("word"), both consistent with the semantic range of the Hebrew term, which can denote "thing" or "word." The Hebrew lo'-met 'echad ("not one died") is rendered by the LXX as οὐκ ἐτελεύτησεν οὐδέν ("nothing died") and by the Vulgate as nihil omnino periit ("nothing at all perished"), both shifting from the Hebrew's specific numeral "one" to a general negation "nothing."