Genesis 12:6

Summary

The verse narrates Abram's passage through the land of Canaan, tracing his route to the site of Shechem and the great tree (or oak) of Moreh. It closes with a notice that the Canaanites were, at that time, already inhabiting the land.

Key words

• va-ya'avor ("and he passed", H5674A) — qal verb with narrative vav, placing the action in sequence as the next event of the story; the subject "he" refers to Abram, named immediately after.
• me-qom ("place of", H4725) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it is grammatically bound to the following proper name Shechem ("place of Shechem").
• elon ("great tree of", H0436H) — masculine singular noun in construct state, bound to the proper name Moreh, so the phrase reads "the great tree of Moreh" rather than two separate items.
• ha-kena'ani ("the Canaanite[s]", H3669A) — gentilic noun with definite article, functioning as a collective term for the population of the land.
• az ("then", H0227A) — adverb marking a temporal note, situating the presence of the Canaanites at the time of Abram's passage.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative construction va-ya'avor ("and he passed", H5674A), which links this event to the preceding narrative flow and identifies Abram as the one performing the action. The verb is followed by ba-aretz ("in the land", H9003 + H0776G), giving the general setting, and then two parallel prepositional phrases introduced by ad ("to", H5704): first ad meqom Shekhem ("to the place of Shechem", H4725 + H7927G), then ad elon Moreh ("to the great tree of Moreh", H0436H + H4176G). Both meqom and elon are construct nouns, meaning they cannot stand alone grammatically — each depends on the proper name that follows it, producing the sense "the place belonging to/named Shechem" and "the great tree belonging to/named Moreh."

The final clause, introduced by the conjunction ve- ("and", H9002) attached to ha-kena'ani ("the Canaanite", H3669A), shifts from narrating Abram's movement to a background statement about the land's population. The adverb az ("then", H0227A) marks this as a temporal aside, and the repetition of ba-aretz ("in the land", H9003 + H0776G) — the same phrase used earlier for Abram's presence — creates a structural echo between Abram's arrival and the Canaanites' prior presence in that same land.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders elon ("great tree of", H0436H) as δρῦν τὴν ὑψηλήν ("the lofty oak/tree"), an interpretive rendering of the tree type, where the Hebrew simply uses a construct noun without specifying species or height. The Vulgate renders the same word as convallem illustrem ("illustrious valley"), diverging from both the Hebrew "tree" sense and the LXX's "oak" rendering, describing a valley rather than a tree.