Genesis 12:7

Summary

Yehovah appears to Abram and announces that he will give "this land" to Abram's offspring. In response, Abram builds an altar at that location, dedicated to Yehovah who had appeared to him there.

Key words

• va-yera' ("and he appeared", H7200G) — niphal narrative form; the niphal stem marks the verb as passive/reflexive, so the subject Yehovah is presented as the one who "makes himself seen" rather than simply "seeing."
• zar'a-kha ("your offspring", H2233H) — construct noun with second-person suffix; grammatically singular in form though it denotes a collective (descendants), a common feature of this noun in Hebrew.
• 'etten ("I will give", H5414G) — qal imperfect first person; the imperfect aspect marks the giving as ongoing/future rather than a completed past act, contrasting with the narrative perfects surrounding it.
• ha-ni.re'ah ("the one who had appeared", H7200G) — niphal participle with definite article; this repeats the same root as va-yera' but as a participle, functioning as a descriptive label for Yehovah ("the one appearing/who appeared") rather than a finished narrative action.
• va-yiven ("and he built", H1129) — qal narrative verb; continues the wayyiqtol chain, marking Abram's action as the sequential consequence of Yehovah's speech.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four wayyiqtol ("and then...") verbs — va-yera', va-yomer, va-yiven, and implicitly the closing participial clause — which is the standard Biblical Hebrew narrative structure moving the story forward step by step: appearance, speech, building, naming. This chain creates a tight causal sequence: because Yehovah appeared and spoke, Abram built.

The verb 'etten ("I will give", H5414G) is an imperfect, distinguishing the promise itself (future/ongoing) from the surrounding narrative perfects that report completed past events. The construct phrase le-zar'a-kha ("to your offspring") places the recipient of the land-grant as Abram's descendant line rather than Abram himself, a distinction the direct object marker 'et (H0853) before ha-'aretz ha-zot ("this land") reinforces by clearly marking "the land" as the object being given.

The final clause repeats the root r-'-h ("to see/appear") from the opening verb, now as a niphal participle ha-nir'eh ("the one who had appeared") functioning attributively on "Yehovah" — literally "to Yehovah, the one appearing/having appeared to him." This creates a verbal echo (finite verb → participle) framing the whole verse around the motif of appearing.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew va-yiven sham... 'Avram is implicit in subject (the verb "he built" is not given a stated subject in this word list at position 18, though Abram is understood from context); the LXX explicitly inserts Ἀβράμ ("Abram") as the stated subject of "built" (ᾠκοδόμησεν... Ἀβράμ), where the Hebrew clause continues with only the verb form without repeating the proper name. The Vulgate similarly leaves the subject implicit with the relative "Qui" ("who [built]"), matching the Hebrew's lack of a repeated proper noun there.