Numbers 33:4

Summary

The verse states that Egypt was burying all those whom Yehovah had struck down among them — every firstborn — and that Yehovah had also carried out acts of judgment against their gods. The sentence links Israel's departure timing to Egypt's mourning and to a divine action directed at Egyptian deities.

Key words

• mekabberim ("burying", H6912) — piel participle, masculine plural, describing an ongoing intensive action ("the ones burying"), marking ‌Egypt as the grammatical subject engaged in continuous activity at that moment.
• hikkah ("he had struck down", H5221) — hiphil perfect, causative and completed; Yehovah is the causer of the striking, and the perfect aspect situates this as an action already finished before the burying takes place.
• bekhor ("firstborn", H1060) — masculine singular construct governed by kol ("every", H3605), forming the phrase "every firstborn," a totalizing construct chain rather than a plural noun.
• elohei-hem ("their gods", H0430J + H9028) — masculine plural construct with pronominal suffix, "gods of them," specifying whose gods received the judgment.
• shephatim ("acts of judgment", H8201) — masculine plural noun, the object of asah ("he had done", H6213A), indicating multiple distinct judicial actions rather than a single verdict.

What the text says

The verse opens with a conjunction attached to Mitzrayim ("Egypt", H4713) as subject, followed immediately by the participle mekabberim. This participle construction (rather than a finite verb) frames Egypt's burying as a backdrop action — something in progress — against which the main narrative events occur. The object of that burying is introduced by the relative particle asher ("whom", H0834A) plus the untranslated direct object marker 'et (H0853), pointing back to those struck down by Yehovah, expressed in the hiphil perfect hikkah. The phrase kol-bekhor ("every firstborn", H3605 + H1060) stands in apposition, clarifying who was struck.

The second clause shifts to a new subject-verb-object order: Yehovah (H3068G) as subject, asah ("he had done", H6213A) as qal perfect verb, and shephatim ("acts of judgment", H8201) as its plural object, with the target marked by the prepositional phrase u-be-elohei-hem ("and against their gods", H9002+H9003+H0430J+H9028). The construct chain elohei-hem ties the judgment specifically to the gods "of them," i.e., of Egypt, paralleling structurally the earlier construct kol-bekhor. Both clauses use Yehovah as agent with a perfect verb form, indicating completed actions prior to or concurrent with the burying described by the participle.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shephatim ("acts of judgment", H8201) with the singular noun ekdikēsin ("vengeance/vindication"), collapsing the Hebrew plural into one abstract term, and adds the phrase "in the land of Egypt" (ἐν γῇ Αἰγύπτῳ) not present in the Hebrew construct chain. The Vulgate places the clause about the gods in a parenthetical aside ("nam et in diis eorum exercuerat ultionem"), using ultionem ("vengeance") for shephatim, differing from the Hebrew's plural "judgments" and from its own syntactic position as a main clause in Hebrew.