What Does Exodus 9:18 Mean?
Behold, tomorrow at this time I will make it rain a very heavy hail, such as has not been in Egypt since its foundation, even until now.
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
Behold, to morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now.THE KEY
The hail is named as weight, and it falls in Egypt, whose Hebrew name carries the image of the narrows.
THE MEANING
You stand before a warning whose scale exceeds anything you have known: an overwhelming force is named before it arrives. The verse keeps the violence concrete, describing the coming hail as weight falling into a constricted place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A past without precedent does not guarantee a future within familiar limits.
THE ROOT
כָּבֵד
kaved
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy, weighty, or burdensome.
“heavy” in this verse is kaved. The word translated “grievous” names heaviness: the hail is not only severe but weighty. This same root reaches from physical weight to the weight a person or thing is accorded.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight; honor or glory.
כָּבוֹד
The root’s sense of weight gives the hail’s severity a physical density, while also naming the weight accorded as honor.
kibbed: To honor, treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
This verb carries heaviness into the act of assigning weight or importance, revealing the shared scale beneath “grievous” and “honor.”
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צָרַר
ts-r-r
To bind, confine, or press into narrowness; the place-name carries the image of the narrows.
מִצְרַיִם (Mitzrayim, “Egypt; the narrows”) holds constriction in the place-name. The verse sets unprecedented weight inside that narrowness, joining the setting and the force through images of pressure.
ALSO GROWS
tzar: Narrow, tight, constricted.
צַר
This branch gives the underlying image of narrowness carried by the place-name.
metzar: A narrow place or strait; distress.
מֵצַר
This branch makes the setting’s constriction vivid: the hail falls into the narrows.
THE PATTERN
Hail from heaven is portrayed as a force whose destructive scale exceeds human control.
And there was hail, and fire flashing within the hail, very heavy, such as had not been like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, Which I have held back for the time of the narrow place, for the day of battle and war?And a great hail comes down out of heaven upon the people, each stone weighing about a talent, and the people speak harm against God because of the blow of the hail, for its blow is exceedingly great.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their falling short is very heavy.The word translated “grievous” here and “very grievous” there comes from כבד (k-b-d, “to be heavy”). The shared root lets the verse’s violent hail and Sodom’s moral burden speak through the same language of weight.
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