Exodus 6:4

Summary

God states that he "established" his covenant with the patriarchs, with the purpose of giving them the land of Canaan — described as the land where they had lived as resident foreigners. The verse links the covenant itself to the promise of the land, using the same land in two grammatical descriptions: as "Canaan" and as "the land of their sojournings."

Key words

• ha.ki.Moti ("I established", H6965I) — hiphil perfect, first person: a causative form indicating the speaker actively "caused to stand" or set up the covenant, not merely made or spoke it.
• be.riTi ("my covenant", H1285) — construct noun with 1st person suffix, marking the covenant as belonging specifically to the speaker (God), not a mutual pact-name of others.
• Tet ("to give", H5414G) — qal infinitive, expressing the purpose or intended result of the "establishing" in word 3: the covenant is directed toward a future act of giving.
• me.gu.rei ("sojournings", H4033) — masculine plural construct noun, describing the land not by an event but by a recurring status of the ancestors ("their sojournings") within it.
• Ga.ru ("they sojourned", H1481A) — qal perfect, 3rd plural, a completed past action, echoing the noun in word 18 and reinforcing that this dwelling was already finished/past relative to the speaker's present statement.

What the text says

The clause opens with ve ("and", H9002) plus Gam ("also", H1571), signaling continuity with a preceding statement (the addition of another established act). The main verb, ha.ki.Moti ("I established", H6965I), is hiphil perfect — a causative, completed action — governing the direct object 'et-be.riTi ("my covenant"), marked by the object particle 'et (H0853, untranslated) and the 1st-person suffixed noun be.riTi (H1285). The covenant is said to be established 'i.Tam ("with them", H0854+H9038), i.e., with a third-person plural group referred to only by pronoun here.

The purpose of this establishing is given by the infinitive Tet ("to give", H5414G), introduced by la (H9005), forming a purpose clause: "to give to them" (la.Hem, H9005+H9038) the land. The object given is specified twice, both times with the object marker 'et (H0853): first as 'E.retz Ke.Na'an ("land of Canaan", construct + proper name, H0776G + H3667A), then restated as 'E.retz me.gu.rei.Hem ("the land of their sojournings", construct plural noun + suffix, H4033+H9028). This second phrase is qualified by the relative clause 'a.Sher-Ga.ru va.h ("which they sojourned in it", H0834A + H1481A qal perfect + preposition ba with 3rd fem. singular suffix referring back to "land"), a completed-action clause describing the ancestors' prior dwelling in the land as foreigners.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Ke.Na'an ("Canaan") as "τῶν Χαναναίων" ("of the Canaanites", i.e., the people-group) rather than the Hebrew's direct place-name construct "land of Canaan." The LXX also splits the final relative clause into two verbs, "παρῳκήκασιν" and "παρῴκησαν" (both "sojourned/dwelt as resident aliens"), producing a repetition not present in the single Hebrew verb Garu ("they sojourned", H1481A). The Vulgate's "terram peregrinationis eorum ... fuerunt advenae" ("land of their sojourning... they were sojourners") parallels the Hebrew construct noun me.gu.rei.Hem fairly closely but uses "advenae" ("sojourners/foreigners") rather than repeating a cognate verb, differing from the Hebrew's verb-noun repetition (me.gu.rei / Garu, both from the same root H1481-family) that links "sojournings" and "they sojourned" directly.