Genesis 10:8

Summary

The verse states that Cush fathered Nimrod, and that Nimrod was the one who began to be a mighty figure on the earth. The sentence uses a resumptive pronoun to emphasize Nimrod as the subject of the second clause, marking him as the starting point of a new development ("mighty man").

Key words

• ya.Lad ("he fathered", H3205) — qal perfect of the verb for begetting; a completed act establishing the genealogical link between Cush and Nimrod.
• hu' ("he", H1931) — independent personal pronoun placed right after Nimrod's name; it resumes and highlights Nimrod as the subject of what follows, separating the genealogical statement from the new claim about him.
• he.Chel ("he began", H2490C) — hiphil perfect of the root for "begin"; the causative stem here marks the initiation of a state or activity, not merely an ongoing condition.
• gi.Bor ("a mighty [man]", H1368) — a noun in construct-like use after the infinitive h.Yot ("to be", H1961); it denotes a category of person (a "mighty one"), the status Nimrod is said to have begun to occupy.
• 'A.retz ("earth/land", H0776G) with the prefixed ba. ("in the", H9003) — the noun, definite through the article, locates this "beginning" spatially, "in the earth/land."

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by the vav-conjunctive (ve, H9002) that opens the verse. The first clause, Khush ya.Lad 'et-Nimrod, follows the standard Hebrew genealogical pattern: subject (Khush) + qal perfect verb (ya.Lad) + direct object marker ('et, H0853, untranslated) + object (Nimrod). This is a simple statement of paternity, structurally identical to other father-son notices in the surrounding genealogy.

The second clause shifts focus with the independent pronoun hu' ("he", H1931), which is grammatically unnecessary since the verb he.Chel already carries a third-person singular subject marker. Its presence produces an emphatic, resumptive effect, singling Nimrod out from the preceding clause as the topic of a distinct statement. The hiphil perfect he.Chel ("he began") indicates the causative initiation of an action or state, here linked to the infinitive construct lihyot ("to be," from h.Yot, H1961) governed by the preposition li ("to," H9005). This infinitive introduces the noun gi.Bor ("mighty [man]," H1368), which functions as a predicate complement describing what Nimrod began to be. The final phrase ba'aretz ("in the earth/land") locates this development geographically, using the article-bearing preposition ba (H9003) with 'aretz (H0776G).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders gi.Bor ("mighty [man]") as γίγας ("giant"), a term with different connotations than the Hebrew noun, which denotes strength or might rather than physical gigantism. The Vulgate uses potens ("powerful"), closer to the Hebrew sense. The Spanish SBLIBRE and English BSB translations both render he.Chel... lihyot gibbor with phrasing emphasizing precedence ("the first... that hubo" or "began to be"), reflecting the hiphil's causative-inceptive nuance differently across languages.