Exodus 17:16

Summary

The verse records Moses' declaration after the battle with Amalek, built around a compact, verbless Hebrew phrase — "a hand upon the throne of Yah" — followed by the statement that war belongs to Yehovah against Amalek "from generation to generation."

Key words

• yad ("a hand", H3027) — bare noun, no verb attached in the Hebrew clause; the action (lifting, placing) is not specified, leaving the phrase elliptical.
• kes ("throne of", H3676) — masculine singular construct; this spelling is shorter than the more common form of "throne" elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, an orthographic feature of this verse.
• Yah ("Yehovah", H3050) — the short form of the divine name, distinct from the fuller Yehovah (H3068G) used later in the same verse for "war belongs to Yehovah."
• milchamah ("war", H4421) — feminine singular noun, functioning as the subject of the nominal clause "war [belongs] to Yehovah."
• mi-dor dor ("from generation generation", H1755 + H1755) — the noun dor ("generation") is repeated without a conjunction, an idiomatic construction expressing continuity ("generation to generation").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence has two main parts, both nominal (verbless) clauses introduced by ki ("that"/"if", H3588A). The first, yad 'al-kes Yah ("a hand on the throne of Yah"), lacks any finite verb — there is no word in the Hebrew for "lifted," "raised," or "swore." The subject yad ("hand") is simply placed in construct relation with kes Yah ("throne of Yah") via the preposition 'al ("on/upon"). This grammatical bareness is why translations must supply an action to make sense of the image, and why interpreters disagree on what is meant by "hand" and "throne" here.

The second clause, milchamah la-Yehovah ba-'Amalek ("war to/for Yehovah against Amalek"), is likewise a nominal clause: milchamah ("war") is the grammatical subject, with the preposition la- marking possession or attribution ("belonging to Yehovah") and ba- ("in/against") marking the object of that war, 'Amalek. The final phrase mi-dor dor uses simple repetition of dor ("generation") without a connecting conjunction, a Hebrew idiom indicating continuous succession across generations, rendered in translation as "from generation to generation."

Differences between versions

The absence of a verb in the first clause produces divergent renderings. The BSB supplies "was lifted up" ("a hand was lifted up toward the throne"), treating yad as the subject of an implied passive action. The SBLIBRE instead reads it as a cohortative command, "¡Levantemos las manos!" ("Let us lift the hands!"), shifting the grammatical subject to a first-person plural exhortation not explicit in the Hebrew construct phrase. The Vulgate's "manus solii Domini" ("the hand of the throne of the Lord") reorganizes the construct relationship, attaching "hand" directly to "throne" as a genitive chain rather than preserving the preposition 'al ("upon") found in the Hebrew. The RV1909's "la mano sobre el trono" stays closest to the Hebrew's prepositional structure without added verbs.