Bible Strands
Exodus 9:15
For by this time I could have stretched out My hand and struck you and your people with a plague to wipe you off the earth.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God addresses Pharaoh during the plague of hail, declaring that He has deliberately withheld immediate destruction to allow His authority to be recognized.
The words — The Hebrew verb שָׁלַחְתִּי (sha.Lach.ti) means "I stretched out," combined with יָדִי (ya.D/i) for "My hand," forming the literal phrase "I stretched out My hand."
The thread — The text links this action to Exodus 3:20, where God promises to stretch out His hand against Egypt, and to Exodus 9:3, where the hand of the LORD brings plague on the livestock.
Why it lands — The verse states that God’s restraint is a calculated delay, requiring the reader to acknowledge that withholding judgment serves a specific purpose rather than signaling absence or powerlessness.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
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.
Cross-references
- Exodus 3:20 So I will stretch out My hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders I will perform among them. And after that, he will release you.
- Exodus 9:3 then the hand of the LORD will bring a severe plague on your livestock in the field—on your horses, donkeys, camels, herds, and flocks.
- Exodus 9:6 And the next day the LORD did just that. All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one animal belonging to the Israelites died.
- Exodus 9:16 But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power to you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
- Exodus 11:4 So Moses declared, “This is what the LORD says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt,
- Exodus 12:29 Now 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.
- Exodus 14:28 The waters flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had chased the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.
- 1 Kings 13:34 And this was the sin of the house of Jeroboam that led to its extermination and destruction from the face of the earth.
- Proverbs 2:22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be uprooted.