What Does Exodus 9:15 Mean?
For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may strike you and your people with plague, and you shall be cut off from the earth.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “stretch out” also means send forth or release, and here the hand sent forth carries a blow.
THE MEANING
The hand is extended to smite, with pestilence named as the means by which ruler and people may be cut off from the earth. The threat is collective and bodily, reaching from one person to an entire people. The verse keeps destruction in plain view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that divine power is always shown as protection: here the hand is extended to strike, and a people are threatened with extinction.
THE ROOT
שָׁלַחְתִּי
shalachti
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send out, send forth, release.
“stretch out my hand” in this verse is shalachti. The KJV’s “stretch out” carries the root sense of sending forth or releasing. Here that outward movement is a hand sent toward Pharaoh and his people, followed by the threat of pestilence and disappearance.
ALSO GROWS
shilleaḥ: Send away, release.
שִׁלֵּחַ
This branch makes the root’s sense of letting go audible beside the hand sent forth in this verse.
shaliach: Messenger, envoy.
שָׁלִיחַ
A messenger is one sent forth, showing how the same root can describe an extending hand or a person dispatched.
וָאַךְ
va’akh
GROWS FROM
נכה
Strike, hit.
“strike” in this verse is va’akh. The root behind “smite” also forms a Hebrew noun for a blow or plague. The verse uses a separate word for “pestilence,” but the striking root gives the threat a direct, bodily force.
ALSO GROWS
hikkah: He struck, smote.
הִכָּה
This verb form keeps the root’s action of striking explicit.
makkah: Blow, wound, plague.
מַכָּה
This noun shows that the same root can name both a strike and an affliction.
THE PATTERN
When the LORD’s hand is extended in judgment, divine power takes bodily form as affliction and destruction.
But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon Ashdod, and he laid them waste, and struck them with swellings, Ashdod and all its borders.Therefore the burning of the LORD's anger flares against his people, and he has stretched out his hand against them, and has struck them. The hills quaked, and their corpses lay like refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this, the burning of his anger has not turned back, but his hand is still stretched out.And now, look, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And at once a mist and a darkness fell on him, and he went about seeking hands to lead him.THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.“Let my people go” uses שַׁלַּח (shalach), the same root as “stretch out” here, with the sense of sending forth or releasing. The shared root holds a demanded release beside a hand sent forth to strike.
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