Commento su Esodo 23:27

והמתי I WILL CONFOUND — This is equivalent to וְהָמַמְתִּי (i. e. the root is המם). Its rendering in the Targum is ואשנש “and I will confound”. Similar is every verb the root of which has its last letter doubled (verbs ע"ע): when it is changed (conjugated) to express the idea of “I have done something” (i. e. the first person singular perfect of the Kal; the same really applies to some inflected forms of other conjugations also) there are occasions when one omits the doubled letter (it is actually the first of the two similar letters) and dageshes the remaining letter of these two and vowels it with מלאפום (our חולם). Examples are: וְהַמֹּתִי which is of the same derivation as, (Isaiah 28:28) “and the wheel of his cart makes a confused noise (המם)”; (Ecclesiastes 2:20) וְסַבֹּתִי, “and I turned about” which is of the same derivation as, (I Samuel 7:16) “and he went round (וסבב) to Bethel”; (Psalms 116:6) דַלֹּתִי “I was low”, of the same derivation as, (Isaiah 19:6) “The waters shall become low (דללו) and dried up”; (Isaiah 49:16) “I have graven thee (חַקֹּתִיךְ) upon the palms of my hand”, of the same derivation as, (Judges 5:15) “things engraved (חקקי) in the heart”; (I Samuel 12:3) את מי רַצֹּתִי “whom have I crushed”, of the same derivation as, (Job 20:19) “because he hath crushed (רצץ) and hath forsaken the poor”. He, however, who translates it in the Targum by וְאֶקְטַל , is in error. For if it were derived from the root denoting death (מות), the ה in it would not be vowelled with Patach and its מ would not be dageshed nor vowelled with חולם, but it would read וְהַמַתִּי, as, (Numbers 14:15) “Now if Thou shalt kill (וְהַמַתָּ) this people”, the ת being dageshed because it would come in place of two ת’s, one being a root-letter — for no form of מות can be written without at least one ת (that in the root) — and the other being a servile letter (part of the suffix), just as תִּי in אמר-תי and חמא-תי and עשי-תי. Similarly with נתתי: the second ת is dageshed because it comes in the place of two ת’s — since it (the word) really requires three ת’s, two for the root, as in, (Joshua 10:12) “the day when the Lord giveth (תת)”, and in, (Ecclesiastes 3:13) “it is the gift (מתת) of God”, — and the third as a servile letter.

ונתתי את כל אויביך אליך עורף, they will turn their backs to you out of fear and the confusion in accordance with My promise

את אימתי אשלח לפניך, "I will send My terror before you, etc." Even though G'd had said in verse 23 that He would cut off the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, G'd tells the Israelites here that this would not happen immediately but that He would first terrorise the Canaanite population during the time required for the Israelites to increase in numbers sufficiently to take over the country without leaving large areas empty of human beings. G'd hinted here that the conquest of the land of Canaan would proceed gradually, something spelled out in greater detail in verse 29.