What Does Exodus 9:25 Mean?
And the hail struck throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast, and the hail struck all the grass of the field, and shattered every tree of the field.
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
And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field.THE KEY
The hail’s strike erases the boundary between a blow against bodies and a blow against the living land.
THE MEANING
The blow reaches every exposed form of life: people and animals in the field, herbs, and trees. The verse holds bodily life and the land that sustains it under the same impact. Nothing named in the open field escapes the hail’s reach.
THE ROOT
וַיַּךְ
vayyak
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
To strike, wound, or beat down.
“struck” in this verse is vayyak. The same strike-root appears twice, carrying the hail’s impact from people and animals to every herb. It also gives מַכָּה (makkāh) its sense of a blow or plague, binding the act of striking to the devastation it leaves.
ALSO GROWS
makkāh: A blow, wound, or plague.
מַכָּה
This branch names the strike as an affliction, linking the hail’s impact to the damage it produces.
makkēh: One striking; a striker.
מַכֶּה
This branch makes the agent of the blow visible: the hail is the force striking through the field.
וַיְשַׁבֵּר
vayeshabber
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, shatter, or split apart.
“shattered” in this verse is vayeshabber. The tree is not merely marked or bent; the word carries the force of breaking it apart. The same root appears in words for fracture and for breakers of the sea, widening the image from a single impact to a force that breaks through.
ALSO GROWS
shever: Breaking, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This noun makes the tree’s broken state part of a broader language of ruin.
mishbar: A breaker; breakers or waves of the sea.
מִשְׁבָּר
This branch evokes a breaking force moving across a landscape, like a wave reaching what stands in its path.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צָרַר
ts-r-r
To press in, bind, or constrict.
“Egypt” in this verse is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim carries the image of the two narrows, rooted in צַר (tsar), narrowness. Here the hail reaches across the named land and its open fields, placing the scene of destruction within the larger movement from constriction toward spaciousness.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, tight, or constricted.
צַר
This root-word supplies the image of narrowness carried in the name Mitzrayim.
metzar: A narrow place or distress.
מֵצַר
This branch gives constriction a lived form: a place or condition where room and freedom are pressed in.
THE PATTERN
When judgment moves through weather, the same force reaches creatures and the growth that sustains them.
He struck down their vines with hail, and their sycamores with frost.He handed over their cattle to the hail, and their herds to the flaming bolts.The first messenger sounds, and there comes hail and fire mixed with blood, and they are thrown upon the earth; and the third part of the trees is burned down, and all green grass is burned down.THE THREAD
But the wheat and the spelt were not struck, for they were still hidden.The same strike-root appears here in “not smitten”: the wheat and rye remain untouched because they have not yet grown up. This gives the hail’s reach a precise edge, its devastation is wide, yet the crops’ stage of growth determines what it strikes.
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