Genesis 12:4

Summary

The verse narrates Abram's departure from Haran in obedience to a prior word from Yehovah, accompanied by Lot, and records his age—seventy-five years—at the moment of that departure.

Key words

• yelekh ("he went", H1980) — qal narrative verb, repeated twice (for Abram and implicitly for Lot's going "with him"), marking sequential narrative action ("and then he went").
• dibber ("he had said", H1696) — piel perfect, denoting a completed prior speech-act by Yehovah; the piel stem intensifies the verb of speaking compared to a simple qal form.
• ben ("[was] a son of", H1121) — construct noun used idiomatically with a number to express age ("a son of five years and seventy years" = seventy-five years old).
• tzeto ("came out", H3318) — qal infinitive with pronominal suffix ("his going out"), functioning as a temporal clause anchoring the age statement to the moment of departure from Haran.
• ka'asher ("as", H0834D combined with H9004 "just") — relative particle forming a comparative clause that ties Abram's action directly to the content of Yehovah's prior speech.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two parallel narrative clauses using va-yelekh ("and he went") — first for Abram, then for Lot's accompanying movement ("with him," itto, H0854 + suffix). The first clause is qualified by ka'asher dibber elav Yehovah ("just as Yehovah had said to him"), where the piel perfect dibber places the divine speech in the past relative to the departure, establishing a cause-and-result sequence: the speech happened first, the going follows.

The age formula ben-chamesh shanim ve-shiv'im shanah ("a son of five years and seventy years") uses the construct noun ben idiomatically, a pattern where age is expressed through kinship terminology rather than a simple adjective. The two number words are grammatically distinct: chamesh (H2568, common gender) modifies the plural shanim ("years"), while shiv'im (H7657, masculine) modifies the singular shanah ("year"), a common variation in Hebrew number-noun agreement for compound numerals. The clause be-tzeto me-Charan ("in his going out from Haran") uses the infinitive construct with a pronominal suffix, functioning temporally ("when he went out") rather than as a finite verb, tightly linking the age statement to the specific moment of leaving Haran.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew states the age as "five years and seventy years" (chamesh shanim ve-shiv'im shanah). The Vulgate renders this as "septuaginta quinque annorum" ("seventy-five years"), matching the Hebrew numerically though reversing the word order. The LXX (Swete) text given here reads "ἐτῶν πέντε" ("five years"), lacking the "seventy" component (ἑβδομήκοντα) found in the Hebrew and Vulgate figure of seventy-five.