| 13. Linguistic Exegesis The verse is a compact poetic couplet built on repetition: yokhal {יֹאכַל | yōʾḵal} ‘it will consume’ appears twice, creating rhythmic insistence and portraying destruction as relentless and ongoing. The first clause assigns the action to an unnamed agent and targets baddei {בַּדֵּי | baddê} with oro {עוֹרוֹ | ʿōrô} in a possessive relationship, a terse image of the body being eaten from the outside inward. The second clause reuses the same verb with baddav {בַּדָּיו | baddāyw} as the object, then appends bekhor mavet {בְּכוֹר מָוֶת | bəkhôr māweṯ} ‘firstborn of death’ as a climactic identification of the devouring force; the construct chain functions metaphorically, using “firstborn” to express preeminence and terror. English renders the parallelism with a semicolon and keeps the doubled verb to preserve the Hebrew escalation, while making the implicit agent explicit in the second line by treating “the firstborn of death” as the consuming power. |