Exodus 17:15

Summary

The verse reports two consecutive actions by Moses: building an altar and naming it. The name given is itself a short sentence, "Yehovah [is] my standard," rendering the altar's name a declarative phrase rather than a single word.

Key words

• iYiven ("he built", H1129) — qal narrative form, marking the first sequential action ("and then he built").
• mizBeach ("an altar", H4196) — masculine singular noun, the object built.
• shemO ("its name", H8034 + H9023) — construct noun with 3ms suffix, "name-of-it," introducing what follows as the content of the name.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068) — the divine name, here functioning as the subject of the embedded naming-clause.
• niSSi ("my standard", H5251 + H9020) — construct noun with 1cs suffix, "standard-of-me," the predicate completing the name.

What the text says

The verse is built on two narrative verb chains joined by the vav-conversive: va-yiven ("and he built") and va-yiqra ("and he called"). Both are third-person masculine singular qal forms, keeping Moses as the single subject throughout. The second clause, "va-yiqra shemo," uses the construct noun shem ("name") with a 3ms suffix ("its name," referring back to the altar), a standard formula in Hebrew for naming an object or place.

What follows shemo is not a single-word name but a short nominal clause: Yehovah nissi, literally "Yehovah [is] my-standard." Hebrew allows a bare juxtaposition of subject and predicate without a copula ("is"), so the two words Yehovah and nissi together form the content of the name given to the altar. The word nissi itself is a construct noun ("standard-of") bound to the 1cs suffix -i ("my"), yielding "my standard" — the same grammatical structure as shemo ("its name") earlier in the verse, showing a parallel use of construct + suffix across the sentence. The altar's name is therefore a full statement, not a proper noun in the ordinary sense.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) expands the sentence with "dicens" ("saying"), a word not present in the Hebrew text as supplied, and renders nissi as "exaltatio mea" ("my exaltation"), differing from the "standard/banner" sense given by the Hebrew noun nissi (H5251). The Spanish RV1909 keeps the Hebrew name transliterated as "Jehová-nissi," treating it as a proper name, while BSB and SBLIBRE translate it descriptively as "The LORD Is My Banner" / "Yehová es mi bandera," rendering nissi as "banner" rather than "standard" or "exaltation."