The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn
Exodus 12:29–30 — The Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
29Now at midnight the LORD struck down every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner in the dungeon, as well as all the firstborn among the livestock.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî ba·ḥă·ṣî hal·lay·lāh Yah·weh hik·kāh ḵāl bə·ḵō·wr bə·’e·reṣ miṣ·ra·yim mib·bə·ḵōr par·‘ōh hay·yō·šêḇ ‘al- kis·’ōw ‘aḏ bə·ḵō·wr haš·šə·ḇî ’ă·šer bə·ḇêṯ hab·bō·wr wə·ḵōl bə·ḵō·wr bə·hê·māh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And it came to pass, at the half of the night, that YHWH struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the house of the pit, and every firstborn of beast.
Where the English smooths the original
The previous plagues were nearly all brought upon Egypt by Moses' staff, and with most of them the natural sources are distinctly mentioned; but the last plague came direct from Jehovah without the intervention of Moses, certainly for no other reason than to make it apparent that it was a purely supernatural punishment inflicted by His own omnipotence.On why this last blow comes "direct from Jehovah" with no natural means and no staff of Moses — a purely supernatural stroke.
This judgment, terrible though it was, evinced the equity of divine retribution. For eighty years the Egyptians had caused the male children of the Israelites to be cast into the river [Ex 1:16], and now all their own first-born fell under the stroke of the destroying angel. They were made, in the justice of God, to feel something of what they had made His people feel.On the measure-for-measure justice: Egypt drowned the Hebrews' sons; now Egypt's own firstborn fall.
It reached from the throne to the dungeon: prince and peasant stand upon the same level before God's judgments. The destroying angel entered every dwelling unmarked with blood, as the messenger of woe.On the throne-to-dungeon merism: the judgment levels every rank, sparing only the blood-marked door.
At midnight; a great aggravation of the plague; for then darkness itself strikes men with horror, and makes any calamity more terrible; then they were. asleep and secure, and least expected such a stroke.On midnight as itself an aggravation of the judgment: the hour of deepest darkness, sleep, and false security, when the blow is least expected and most terrible.
30During the night Pharaoh got up—he and all his officials and all the Egyptians—and there was loud wailing in Egypt; for there was no house without someone dead.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
lay·lāh par·‘ōh way·yā·qām hū wə·ḵāl ‘ă·ḇā·ḏāw wə·ḵāl miṣ·ra·yim bə·miṣ·rā·yim wat·tə·hî ḡə·ḏō·lāh ṣə·‘ā·qāh kî- ’ên ba·yiṯ ’ă·šer ’ên- šām mêṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all Egypt; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no house where there was not one dead.
Where the English smooths the original
Not a house where there was not one dead. This cannot have been literally true. In half the families a daughter would have “opened the womb;” in others, the firstborn son would have been absent, or dead previously. To judge Scripture fairly, we must make allowance for the hyperbole of Oriental thought and expression, which causes the substitution of universal terms for general ones, and the absence of qualifying clauses.The hyperbole reading: "all" as Oriental idiom for "the great majority," not strict universality.
The words, "There was not a house where there was not one dead," are to be taken literally, and not merely "as a general expression;" though, of course, they are to be limited, according to the context, to all the houses in which there were first-born of man or beast.The literal reading, answering Ellicott: the words mean what they say, bounded only by the context (houses having a firstborn). Drawn from K&D's note printed on the 12:29 page but treating this clause of v.30.
The Scriptures frequently use the words "all," "none," in a comparative sense—and so in this case. There would be many a house in which there would be no child, and many in which the first-born might be already dead. What is to be understood is, that almost every house in Egypt had a death in it.On the comparative force of "all/none" in Hebrew usage — "almost every house" had a death.
and there was a great cry in Egypt; throughout the whole land, the firstborn being everywhere slain, which caused a most dreadful lamentation of parents for their eldest son, of brethren and sisters for their elder brother, and of servants and maidens for the principal and heir of the family; a cry so loud and general as perhaps was never heard before or since, and under which distress they could have no relief, or any to be their comforter, since all were in the same circumstancesOn the universal, comfortless character of the cry — none could console, since every house was struck alike.
This general disturbance differentiates the present visitations from that which came upon the host of Sennacherib ( 2 Kings 19:35 ). Then, the calamity came with such silence and secrecy, that the deaths were not suspected until men rose to go about their various tasks in the morning Now, every household seems to have been aroused from its sleep in the night. We must suppose sharp and painful illness, terminating after a few hours in death.On the waking, nighttime character of this death: unlike Sennacherib's host, found dead at dawn (2 Kings 19:35), here the whole nation is roused mid-stroke — sharp illness ending in death within hours.
Malignant epidemics are of not unfrequent occurrence in Egypt; and Di. quotes from Kn. (see also DB. iii. 892b) numerous references to travellers and others, who state that they usually break out in spring, and are often worse at the time of the Ḥamsîn windThe critical-scholarship voice: a natural spring epidemic may stand behind the tradition — but Cambridge itself goes on to grant that the plague's momentary suddenness and exclusive targeting of the firstborn give it "a wholly supernatural character."
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens at the night's exact hinge. "And it came to pass, at the half of the night" — ba·ḥă·ṣî hal·lay·lāh (H2677 chêtsîy, "half/middle," + H3915 layil) — fulfilling to the hour the prophecy of 11:4. Keil renders it precisely: the blow fell "in 'the half of the night,' i.e., at midnight, when all Egypt was lying in deep sleep." Poole reads the timing as itself "a great aggravation of the plague; for then darkness itself strikes men with horror." And the subject of the smiting is the bare covenant Name: YHWH (H3068) "struck" (hik·kāh, H5221 nâkâh, Hifil) — the LORD, not the staff of Moses. Keil marks the difference from every prior plague: "the last plague came direct from Jehovah without the intervention of Moses... to make it apparent that it was a purely supernatural punishment inflicted by His own omnipotence." Barnes notes the same direct attribution, while observing that 12:23 also names "the destroyer," in whom — in accordance with Hebrews 11:28 — "all the ancient versions, and most critics, recognize an Angel." The reach of the stroke is a merism — "from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the house of the pit" (bᵉ·ḇêṯ hab·bôr, H953, a cistern-prison). Throne to pit: Henry draws out the leveling — "prince and peasant stand upon the same level before God's judgments." Ellicott guards the lexical point: "the Hebrew word used [bᵉkôwr] applies only to males."
The commentators hear in the choice of victims a deliberate justice. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown: "This judgment, terrible though it was, evinced the equity of divine retribution. For eighty years the Egyptians had caused the male children of the Israelites to be cast into the river, and now all their own first-born fell under the stroke of the destroying angel. They were made, in the justice of God, to feel something of what they had made His people feel." The smiting-verb nâkâh that here falls on Egypt's firstborn is the same verb under which, in the book's opening, Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew sons drowned and the Hebrew foremen beaten — the blow returning to its author. Ellicott insists this death was not silent: "Death did not come, as upon the host of Sennacherib, noiselessly, unperceivedly, but 'with observation.' Those who were seized woke up and aroused their relatives. There was a cry for help, a general alarm, a short, sharp struggle and then a death." The stroke is public, audible, and exactly aimed.
Pharaoh "rose up" (way·yā·qām, H6965 qûwm) in the night — the king who would not let Israel rise and go now rises himself, undone — "he and all his servants and all Egypt." And then the verse's center: "there was a great cry in Egypt" — ṣə·‘ā·qāh ḡə·ḏō·lāh (H6818 tsaʻăqâh, a rare shriek-word, only 20 vv, + H1419 gâdôwl). This is the verbatim discharge of 11:6's prophecy — "a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it." Gill paints the scene: "a cry so loud and general as perhaps was never heard before or since, and under which distress they could have no relief, or any to be their comforter, since all were in the same circumstances." The cause is given in a doubled Hebrew negative — ’ên bayith ’ăsher ’ên-šām mêṯ, "there-is-not a house which there-is-not there a dead-one" — and over its scope the commentators divide. Ellicott: "This cannot have been literally true... we must make allowance for the hyperbole of Oriental thought and expression." JFB reads "all/none" "in a comparative sense" — "almost every house in Egypt had a death in it." Keil resists: the words "are to be taken literally... though, of course, they are to be limited, according to the context, to all the houses in which there were first-born." The verse ends, after all the rising and clamor, on a single bare participle: mêṯ, "dead."
This paragraph is the tool's own reading under Sola Scriptura — fallible, ⚙-marked, offered to be tested, not believed. Read in the original, these two verses are built on a single, terrible symmetry of sound. The book began with Israel's cry — in 2:23 the people "cried" and in 3:7, 9 God said "the cry (tsaʻăqâh) of the children of Israel is come unto me." That rare shriek-word, heard in heaven, set the whole deliverance in motion. Now, at the half of the night, the same rare word comes back — but it is Egypt's cry that fills the land (12:30), the exact "great cry" (tsaʻăqâh gᵉdôlâh) God had pledged in 11:6. The oppressor's house is made to make the very sound the oppressed once made; the cry that ascended for mercy is answered by a cry of judgment, and the two cries rhyme across the book. Set within this frame is the other great symmetry: throne and pit. The Hebrew runs the firstborn from Pharaoh's heir "sitting on his throne" down to the captive's son in "the house of the pit," and the merism does what the merism always does — it abolishes the distance between them. Before the smiting LORD there is no high seat and no low cell; there is only the firstborn, struck or spared. And one detail in the grammar refuses to let the reader make this an impersonal disaster: the subject of the verb "struck" is not a plague, not a wind, not even "the destroyer," but the unmediated Name — YHWH hik·kāh. The previous nine blows came through Moses' staff and named natural means; this one comes from the Name directly. The text is insisting that the deepest judgment in the book is also the most personal — God Himself, at the night's midpoint, settling the account of every drowned Hebrew son. Weigh this against the text; the named commentators are surer guides than the synthesizer.
⚙ A fallible line, not a verse of Scripture: the rare shriek-word that rose from Israel to heaven (3:7) comes back down on Egypt at midnight (12:30) — the oppressor made to make the very cry of the oppressed.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The strongest seam in the unit. The "great cry" of 12:30 is named with H6818 tsaʻăqâh ("a shriek"), a genuinely rare noun at only 20 occurrences, paired with H1419 gâdôwl ("great"). The Verifier records both lexemes — plus H4714 Mitsrayim ("Egypt") — shared with Exodus 11:6, where God foretold "a great cry (tsaʻăqâh gᵉdôlâh) throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more." This is not a chance overlap of common words but the same scarce shriek-noun, the same intensifying adjective, and the same land, recurring within one continuous narrative as prophecy and its precise fulfillment. Held as confirmed verbal: the rare lexeme (20 vv) plus the matched phrase, occurring as announcement-then-execution within the Exodus narrative itself, is a genuine intra-textual verbal seam — the text reporting that what it had promised has now come to pass, in the very words of the promise.
Exodus 12:30 · Exodus 11:6
basis: shared rare Strong's lexeme H6818 tsaʻăqâh (only 20 vv) with H1419 gâdôwl and H4714 Mitsrayim; Verifier-computed (12:30→11:6). The Verifier's default tier was structural; the editor upgrades to verbal on the rare-lexeme ground the rules allow — the scarce shriek-noun plus the matched phrase tsaʻăqâh gᵉdôlâh recur as prophecy (11:6) and fulfillment (12:30) within one continuous narrative, the announcement executed in its own words. Held as the unit's one verbal seam; if weighed conservatively it would read structural.
The same rare noun H6818 tsaʻăqâh that fills Egypt in 12:30 is the word for Israel's cry that opened the deliverance: in Exodus 3:7, 9 the LORD says "I have surely seen the affliction of my people... and have heard their cry (tsaʻăqâh)... the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me." The Verifier records the shared lexeme on both pairings (12:30→3:7 and 12:30→3:9). Held honestly — structural, not verbal: at the lexeme level the word is the same rare one, but no verse quotes another and the direction is reversed — in chapter 3 it is the oppressed crying up to a God who hears; in chapter 12 it is the oppressor crying out under the judgment that hearing set in motion. We therefore tier this structural/thematic rather than verbal: not a citation but a deliberate inversion of the same scarce word across the book — the cry that ascended for rescue returning as the cry of the rescue's cost to Egypt. The motif is real and lexically anchored; the claim is held to the pattern, not pressed to a quotation.
Exodus 12:30 · Exodus 3:7 · Exodus 3:9
basis: shared rare Strong's lexeme H6818 tsaʻăqâh (20 vv); Verifier-computed (12:30→3:7, 12:30→3:9). Held structural, not verbal: no verse cites another and the sense is inverted (Israel's cry heard by God in ch.3 vs. Egypt's cry of judgment in ch.12) — a motif-reversal on the same scarce word, deliberately not claimed as a quotation.
The plague's defining noun, H1060 bᵉkôwr ("firstborn," 100 vv), with the smiting-verb H5221 nâkâh and "Egypt" H4714 Mitsrayim, links 12:29 to the law of the firstborn that this very night grounds. The Verifier records the shared cluster (bᵉkôwr, bᵉhêmâh, nâkâh, Mitsrayim) with Numbers 3:13 — "all the firstborn are mine; for on the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I hallowed unto me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast" — and with Exodus 13:15, where Moses ties the consecration of Israel's firstborn directly to this stroke: "the LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt... therefore I sacrifice... all that openeth the matrix." Held as confirmed structural/thematic: the shared words are real and Verifier-computed but not rare enough (and carry no citation formula) to claim a quotation; what binds the passages is the structural pattern — the night God smote Egypt's firstborn is the night He claimed Israel's firstborn as His own, the judgment and the redemption being two faces of one act.
Exodus 12:29 · Numbers 3:13 · Exodus 13:15
basis: shared Strong's lexemes H1060 bᵉkôwr (100 vv), H5221 nâkâh, H929 bᵉhêmâh, H4714 Mitsrayim; Verifier-computed (12:29→Numbers 3:13, 12:29→Exodus 13:15). Held structural, not verbal: the words are shared but not rare and no verse cites another — the link is the pattern, the smiting of Egypt's firstborn as the express ground for hallowing Israel's firstborn.
The stroke of 12:29 executes the threat with which the contest opened. The Verifier records H1060 bᵉkôwr shared with Exodus 4:23, where God first told Moses what to say to Pharaoh: "Israel is my son, even my firstborn... let my son go, that he may serve me; and if thou refuse... I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn." The last plague (12:29) is the discharge of the first word spoken to Pharaoh (4:23). Held honestly — structural, not verbal: bᵉkôwr is a moderately common word (100 vv) and no citation joins the verses; the seam is the narrative arc — the firstborn-for-firstborn threat issued at the burning-bush commission and carried out at midnight nine chapters later. The motif is firmly grounded in the shared term and the explicit storyline, but is held to the thematic tier rather than pressed as a quotation.
Exodus 12:29 · Exodus 4:23
basis: shared Strong's lexeme H1060 bᵉkôwr (100 vv); Verifier-computed (12:29→4:23). Held structural: the word is common and no verse cites another — the link is the narrative arc, God's opening threat ("I will slay thy son, thy firstborn," 4:23) executed in the closing plague (12:29).
Israel's worship remembered this stroke in the same vocabulary. The Verifier records the cluster H1060 bᵉkôwr + H5221 nâkâh ("smite") + H4714 Mitsrayim shared with Psalm 78:51 — "and smote all the firstborn in Egypt" — and Psalm 136:10 — "to him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever." The historical psalms recite the event of 12:29 in nearly the same words the narrative uses. Held honestly — structural/thematic: the shared words are real and Verifier-confirmed, and the psalms plainly recount this night; but because the lexemes are common rather than rare and the psalms recite rather than formally quote, we tier this structural/thematic — the liturgical memory of the plague, lexically anchored to the narrative it celebrates, not a verbal citation in the technical sense. Notably, Psalm 136 files the slaughter of Egypt's firstborn under "his mercy endureth for ever" — the judgment read by Israel as an act of covenant mercy toward them.
Exodus 12:29 · Psalm 78:51 · Psalm 136:10
basis: shared Strong's lexemes H1060 bᵉkôwr, H5221 nâkâh, H4714 Mitsrayim; Verifier-computed (12:29→Psalm 78:51, 12:29→Psalm 136:10). Held structural, not verbal: common words, liturgical recital rather than formal quotation — the Psalter remembering this night in the narrative's own vocabulary.
Barnes, commenting on this verse, notes that "although the Lord Himself passed through to smite the Egyptians, He employed the agency of 'the destroyer'" (12:23), "in whom, in accordance with" Hebrews 11:28, "all the ancient versions, and most critics, recognize an Angel." Hebrews 11:28 reads the whole night through the lens of faith: "Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them." This is the canonical New Testament interpretation of the agent who struck in 12:29 and of the blood that turned the stroke aside. Held honestly — flagged: this is a cross-Testament link (Greek↔Hebrew), so it cannot rest on a shared Strong's number — the Verifier finds "no shared original-language lexeme found in the index — connection, if any, is thematic/structural and must be argued, not asserted." The connection is real and ancient (Barnes himself invokes it, and "the destroyer" of 12:23 is precisely what Hebrews names), but because the seam is interpretive and cross-language rather than lexical, and because it touches the contested question of the destroyer's identity (the LORD Himself, or an angel, or both), we flag it for the reader to verify against the texts rather than present it as a confirmed verbal thread.
Exodus 12:29 · Hebrews 11:28
basis: cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew) — no shared Strong's number is possible, and the Verifier returns no shared original-language lexeme; the link is thematic/interpretive (Hebrews 11:28 as the NT reading of the destroyer and the Passover blood of 12:23, 29), invoked by Barnes himself. Flagged because it rests on argued canonical interpretation, not the index, and touches the contested identity of "the destroyer."
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The two verses are the dark obverse of the Passover whose blood, in the same chapter (12:7, 13, 23), turns the stroke aside: "when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you." The smiting of every unprotected firstborn (12:29) and the great cry of the houses without blood (12:30) are, by the chapter's own logic, the fate from which the blood-marked door delivers. The New Testament gathers this whole night into Christ: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Corinthians 5:7), and Hebrews 11:28 names the blood that kept "the destroyer" from touching Israel's firstborn — the destroyer of 12:23, 29. Held as figural reading: the Passover-as-type-of-Christ is among the most ancient and widely-held readings in the whole of Scripture, taken up by the New Testament itself; here it is pattern, marked as interpretation. Note honestly that 1 Corinthians 5:7 is a cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew) link with no shared Strong's lexeme — it is offered as the apostolic typological reading, not as a verbal seam.
Exodus 12:29 · Exodus 12:30
The night's pivot is the firstborn son (bᵉkôwr): God had declared "Israel is my son, even my firstborn" (4:22), and to redeem that firstborn He struck the firstborn of Egypt (12:29) and claimed Israel's own firstborn as His (Numbers 3:13; Exodus 13:15). The New Testament carries the firstborn-language to its end in the One who is "the firstborn of every creature" and "the firstborn from the dead" (Colossians 1:15, 18), and "the firstborn among many brethren" (Romans 8:29). Held as figural reading, marked novel: where the tenth plague spares Israel's firstborn at the cost of Egypt's, the deeper pattern Scripture unfolds is a redemption in which God's own Firstborn is not spared but given up to death, so that many sons might be brought to glory. This is an analogical reading across the language barrier — the Hebrew bᵉkôwr of Exodus and the Greek prōtotokos of Colossians are not lexically linked (the Verifier confirms no shared Strong's number across the Testaments), and Exodus does not anticipate Colossians; it is offered as the synthesizer's own typological figure, to be weighed: the spared firstborn of the Passover against the unspared Firstborn of Calvary.
Exodus 12:29
The "great cry" (tsaʻăqâh gᵉdôlâh) that fills Egypt in 12:30 is the same rare shriek-word by which Israel's cry came up to God (3:7, 9) and brought the Deliverer down. Scripture reads the whole Exodus as the master-type of redemption — a God who hears the cry of the afflicted and comes to save. Held as figural reading: the Exodus-deliverance as type of Christ's redemption is ancient and widely held. The tenth plague shows the two faces of that cry: the cry of the oppressed that God answers in mercy, and the cry of judgment that falls where there is no covering blood. In Christ both are gathered — He is the one who hears the cry of the heavy-laden and bids them come (Matthew 11:28), and He is the one who Himself "offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying" (Hebrews 5:7), bearing in His own death the judgment-cry of 12:30 so that the cry of His people might be turned to deliverance. Offered as pattern and type, marked as interpretation, since the cross-Testament links rest on argued typology, not on shared lexemes.
Exodus 12:30
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
This unit's one genuinely verbal seam is internal: the "great cry" of 12:30 discharges the prophecy of 11:6 in the same scarce vocabulary — the rare shriek-noun tsaʻăqâh (only 20 vv) with gâdôwl ("great") and Mitsrayim ("Egypt") — announcement and fulfillment within one continuous narrative. That same rare word ties the verse, more loosely, to Israel's own cry heard by God in 3:7, 9; but there we deliberately downgraded to structural, since no verse cites another and the sense is inverted (the oppressed crying up to God vs. the oppressor crying under judgment) — a motif-reversal on a shared scarce word, not a quotation. The firstborn threads — to Numbers 3:13, Exodus 13:15, Exodus 4:23, and Psalm 78:51 / 136:10 — rest on the Verifier-computed cluster bᵉkôwr (100 vv), nâkâh ("smite"), bᵉhêmâh, and Mitsrayim; these are real and confirmed but the words are common, not rare, and the later texts recite or apply rather than formally quote, so all are held structural/thematic — the law of the firstborn and the Psalter's worship anchored to the night they remember, not verbal citations. Two cross-references are explicitly flagged because they are cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew) and therefore cannot use a shared Strong's number: the link to Hebrews 11:28 (the New Testament's reading of "the destroyer" of 12:23, 29 and the Passover blood, invoked by Barnes himself) and, in the Christ section, 1 Corinthians 5:7 and Colossians 1:15 — all offered as argued canonical/typological interpretation, never as lexical seams, exactly as the cross-Testament rule requires. The bᵉkôwr → prōtotokos ("the spared firstborn vs. the unspared Firstborn") figure is marked novel: the Hebrew and Greek are not lexically linked, Exodus does not anticipate Colossians, and it is the synthesizer's own typological figure, to be tested. One interpretive division is reported but not adjudicated: the scope of "there was not a house where there was not one dead" (12:30). The majority — Ellicott, JFB, Poole, Gill (citing Aben Ezra), and Pulpit — read it as Oriental hyperbole or a comparative "all/none" ("almost every house"); Keil reads it literally, bounded only by context to houses having a firstborn. The narrative's own claim of God's direct agency ("YHWH struck," with no staff and no named natural means) is itself contested historically: Cambridge and others canvass a natural spring pestilence behind the tradition, while Keil argues precisely from the text's silence about means that it is "a purely supernatural punishment." The parsing follows the received Masoretic text; the per-word gloss table mis-aligns a few function words (e.g., kîy at index 12 glossed "in Egypt" where it functions as "for/because"), and these are corrected in the notes against the Hebrew rather than the English column. "Test all things; hold fast to what is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)