Genesis 12:15

Summary

Genesis 12:15 describes three sequential actions: Pharaoh's officials see Sarai, they praise her to Pharaoh, and she is taken into Pharaoh's house. The verse moves from the officials' active perception and speech to a passive event affecting the woman herself.

Key words

• yir'u ("they saw", H7200) — qal narrative form; a straightforward report of visual perception, subject "they" (the officials).
• yehalelu ("they praised", H1984) — piel narrative form, an intensive stem indicating repeated or emphatic praise, not a single simple statement.
• tuqqach ("she was taken", H3947) — hophal narrative form, a causative-passive: the grammatical subject (the woman) undergoes the action rather than performing it, and no agent is named in the Hebrew.
• beit par'oh ("house of Pharaoh", H1004 + H6547) — construct chain, "house of" governing "Pharaoh," specifying the destination as Pharaoh's household/palace.

What the text says

The Hebrew verse is built from three consecutive narrative clauses linked by the vav consecutive (va-), each advancing the storyline: seeing, praising, taking. The first two clauses share the same grammatical subject, sarei far'oh ("the officials of Pharaoh", H8269 + H6547), acting upon otah ("her", H0853 + H9034), the object marker plus pronominal suffix referring to Sarai. The third clause shifts both subject and voice: the grammatical subject becomes ha-ishah ("the woman", H0802), and the verb tuqqach is passive (hophal), meaning the text does not grammatically specify who performed the taking — only that the woman was the one acted upon. This passive construction leaves the agent of the action unstated in the Hebrew grammar itself, in contrast to the two prior clauses where the officials are explicit grammatical subjects. The destination is marked by the construct phrase beit par'oh, "house of Pharaoh," indicating a location (the household or palace) rather than the person of Pharaoh directly, though the preceding clause used el-par'oh ("to Pharaoh", H0413 + H6547) as the recipient of the praise.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the opening action as "nuntiaverunt principes Pharaoni" ("the officials reported to Pharaoh"), where the Hebrew instead states that the officials saw her (yir'u) before praising her — the Vulgate's verb of reporting is not present as a separate action in the Hebrew clause structure. The LXX renders the final clause with an active verb, εἰσήγαγον ("they brought her in"), moving αὐτὴν ("her") πρὸς Φαραώ ("to Pharaoh"), where the Hebrew uses the passive tuqqach ("she was taken") with the woman as grammatical subject and specifies the destination as beit par'oh ("house of Pharaoh") rather than the person of Pharaoh himself.